Institutional research is more relevant today than ever before as growing pressures for improved student learning and increased institutional accountability motivate higher education to effectively use ever-expanding data and information resources. As the most current and comprehensive volume on the topic, the Handbook describes the fundamental knowledge, techniques, and strategies that define institutional research. The book contains an overview of the profession and its history, examines how institutional research supports executive and academic leadership and governance, and discusses the varied ways data from federal, state, and campus sources are used by research professionals. With contributions from leading experts in the field, this important resource reviews the analytic tools, techniques, and methodologies used by institutional researchers in their professional practice and covers a wide range of topics such as: conducting institutional research; statistical applications; comparative analyses; quality control systems; measuring student, faculty, and staff opinions; and management activities designed to improve organizational effectiveness.

In recent decades, higher education systems and institutions have been called to respond to an unprecedented number of challenges. Major challenges emerged with the phenomenal increase in the demand for higher education and the associated massive expansion of higher education systems. In response universities were called to adopt planning and research methods that would enable them to identify and address the needs of a larger, more diverse student body. Higher education institutions began to place greater emphasis on planning and marketing, seeking to maintain their position in an increasingly competitive higher education market. Under the current economic downturn, universities are under pressure to further cut costs while maintaining their attractiveness to prospective students.As a result educational policy makers and administrators are called to select the 'right' alternatives, aiming for both efficiency and effectiveness in delivered outcomes. This book provides insights into the use of data as an input in planning and improvement initiatives in higher education. It focuses on uses (and potential abuses) of data in educational planning and policy formulation, examining several practices and perspectives relating to different types of data. The book is intended to address the need for the collection and utilization of data in the attempt to improve higher education both at the systemic and the institutional level.

As a follow-up to the successful Competing on Analytics, authors Tom Davenport, Jeanne Harris, and Robert Morison provide practical frameworks and tools for all companies that want to use analytics as a basis for more effective and more profitable decision making. Regardless of your company's strategy, and whether or not analytics are your company's primary source of competitive differentiation, this book is designed to help you assess your organization's analytical capabilities, provide the tools to build these capabilities, and put analytics to work. The book helps you answer these pressing questions: What assets do I need in place in my organization in order to use analytics to run my business? Once I have these assets, how do I deploy them to get the most from an analytic approach? How do I get an analytic initiative off the ground in the first place, and then how do I sustain analytics in my organization over time? Packed with tools, frameworks, and all new examples, Analytics at Work makes analytics understandable and accessible and teaches you how to make your company more analytical.

What can an institutional research leader do to ensure their unique roles do not place them or their institution in a legally challenging situation? In this monograph, IR practitioners, legal counselors, and scholars combine their expertise to examine unique legal challenges IR professionals face, offering guidelines for operating within legal boundaries and sustaining effective IR practices. Topics covered in this volume include: using legal precedents and law as a framework for guiding practice and policies; the latest on FERPA; dealing with security breaches; a review of employment, discrimination, harassment, intellectual property, and export control laws; recommendations for limiting liability; and how accreditation may change from voluntary to a contractual or even constitutional protections effort. This is the 172nd volume of this Jossey-Bass quarterly report series. Timely and comprehensive, New Directions for Institutional Research provides planners and administrators in all types of academic institutions with guidelines in such areas as resource coordination, information analysis, program evaluation, and institutional management.

An elementary introduction to significance testing, this paper provides a conceptual and logical basis for understanding these tests.