The Influencing Factors and Improvement Strategies of Peer Assessment Quality among University Students ——Based on the Fuzzy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis

With the wide application of peer assessment in university’s teaching, the quality of peer assessment among university students has attracted the attention of researchers and practitioners. However, most current studies focused on the impact of single factors on the quality of peer assessment. By clarifying the characteristic of the group and the combined effect and linkage of multiple factors on the assessment quality, it has become an important breakthrough to improve the quality of peer assessment. Therefore, this paper adopted the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) method to explore the linkage effect and mechanism of action of preset conditions (gender ratio and prior knowledge), facilitative conditions (teacher intervention), and intrinsic driving conditions (learning motivation and self-efficacy) on the outcome variable (peer assessment quality). It was found that high-quality assessment activities were jointly influenced by multiple conditions, especially the gender ratio was a preset condition affecting the peer assessment quality. The teacher intervention was identified as a critical facilitative condition for improving the peer assessment quality, and prior knowledge was not the core element of high-quality assessment activities. Therefore, the paper proposed effective strategies to improve the peer assessment quality among university students, with the expectation of promoting the improvement of students’ critical thinking ability and providing support for building an open, inclusive and efficient evaluation environment.