D.  Warnings against Inappropriate Use of SPOT Results

1.  Standard deviations that are reported by section (resp., department) for each item measure the extent to which student responses are "scattered" within that section (resp., department).  They do not measure the manner in which instructor means are distributed, hence should not be used to conjecture what percentile an instructor's mean score represents (or even how good or how bad a mean score is).  Quintiles as described in Item 11 are used for that purpose.

2.  Means for the sixteen SPOT items must not be "averaged" to produce a "combined SPOT score."  (There are lots of reasons for this.  Among them are: Question 5 and 6 have a different response scale, campus-wide means are not the same for each item and so they are not weighted properly when averaged, etc.)

3.  Mean scores for two or more courses must not be averaged to obtain a "semester SPOT score" for an individual.  (Again, there are many reasons.  Responses in different courses measure different things, it ignores class size, and it can be used to obscure instances of particularly good or poor performance.)

4.  Averaging SPOT scores from several different courses across several semesters to obtain an "overall individual SPOT score" is improper.

Taken from Faculty Handbook, Appendix J