Rate My Professors: A Study Of Bias and Inaccuracies In Anonymous Self-Reporting

Commentary-driven and opinion-driven “ratings” websites such as Yelp, Amazon Reviews, and Rate My Professors are ubiquitous on the Web. These review sites engage in voluntary self-reporting which is well known to be fraught with bias and inaccurate representations. This study is an investigation into the website known as Rate My Professors which ostensibly seeks to collect and report on college and university professor quality. Rate My Professors (RMP), like many review sites, is anonymous. While it is commonly believed that anonymity increases accuracy, studies have shown otherwise. Studies using anonymous self-reporting are well known to be unreliable, so much so that researchers are required to take compensatory measures to validate their results. Rate My Professors takes no such measures, and in fact there is no guarantee that a “student reviewer” is even a student. This study investigates Rate My Professors for bias, inaccuracy, and invalid data. The study will show compelling evidence which supports the idea that anonymous self-reporting, without compensatory validation measures, is flawed and unsuitable for use in a decision making process.