Data Availability in Teaching Effectiveness Research

Sharing research data promotes transparency and cumulative knowledge building, which is particularly important in fields where data collection is resource-intensive. One such field is teaching effectiveness research, which examines how teaching quality impacts student learning. Drawing valid conclusions in teaching effectiveness research requires classroom-level data involving both students and teachers, measurements of teaching quality and learning outcomes, and a longitudinal design. Despite its potential benefits, earlier studies reported wide variation in data availability, with data being accessible for 10% to 50% of published research articles. Our study investigates data availability in teaching effectiveness research by assessing access to datasets from a sample of published research articles. We sampled articles from meta-analyses in the field, identifying 167 studies that met our inclusion criteria: longitudinal design, peer-reviewed, primary data, and publication after the year 2000. For each article, we checked for published datasets. When no public dataset was available, we contacted corresponding authors to request access. Only 13 publications included links to published datasets. Among contacted researchers, one-third had outdated contact information. Of the remaining researchers, 32 responded, with 9 agreeing to share their data. The overall availability rate was 13.2%, with the odds of data-sharing decreasing by 17% annually post-publication. Data availability in this applied research field was lower than the approximately 25% availability reported for basic research in experimental psychology. These findings highlight the importance of archiving data in repositories, as availability upon request remains limited.