The purpose was to investigate whether student and survey characteristics affect the quality of course evaluation in UK undergraduate medical education. The search included several databases, five journals relevant to medical education and grey literature. Twenty-one publications met entry criteria from various institutions. All included information on the main outcome response rate while there was limited information on completeness rate. The overall response rate is 88%. Being younger, female and at an earlier stage of learning resulted in a higher response rate. The lower number of questions resulted in a higher response rate. Paper-based evaluations had a higher mean response rate than online course evaluations. Courses with evaluations at the start and the end of the course resulted in the highest mean response rate of 90%. These results suggest that student and survey characteristics can affect the quality of course evaluation and thus should be considered when designing an evaluation.