Student evaluations of teaching (SET) questionnaires are widely used in higher education to enhance
the quality of teaching. More study in the area of qualitative analysis of student reasons for rating items
may produce rich, multi-dimensional information, beyond quantitative ratings data, to give the institutions
conducting SETs a better idea of student perception on quality of teaching. This paper reports the findings of
a major Turkish state university’s student evaluation of teaching questionnaire completed by 192 junior
students from the Education Faculty.The qualitative data has been analyzed to determine the reasons given
by the students for their ratings of closed-end items, the relationships between these reasons and the students’
own perception of their initial interpretations of the questions put to them. Such rigorous analysis of student
interpretations should be of value in developing better understanding of student perception about questionaire
items and relationship between the reasons and the ratings given by students.