Student Feedback Questionnaires Are Highly Redundant: Evidence from 6,451 Courses

Student feedback questionnaires for courses are an essential part of quality control at universities. Feedback can be useful to improve courses and to monitor course development over time. However, the number of questions posed to students varies between universities; some use short questionnaires, while others employ more detailed questionnaires.The answers are usually represented on a Likert scale.We analysed the results of student feedback questionnaires for all courses at the University of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien between the years 2016 and 2023 (n = 6,451). In all 6,451 courses the same nine questions (modalities, structure, explanations, outcomes, practicality, integration, respectfulness, workload, and overall satisfaction) were asked on a 5-point Likert-scale.We found that students do not seem to differentiate between questions and tend to respond similarly to all of them, with Spearman correlation coefficients of up to 0.876. This suggests that the use of long and detailed questionnaires might be unnecessary. A significant reduction in the number of feedback questions could streamline the course evaluation process and encourage student participation while little information is lost.Relevance: To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first to analyse the correlations between student feedback questionnaire questions on such a large scale (n = 6,451 courses).