The background and function of a Student Opinion Survey Program at the University of Kansas are described, and suggestions for the development and implementation of polling programs are offered. At the University of Kansas, the technical expertise of staff and students was tapped to provide a credible survey program. Departments and other offices…

A centralized, university-wide approach to collecting alumni information was established. The centralized approach provided information with greater potential for utilization, permitted comparisons among university units, and generated information on trends in alumni outcomes from year to year. All alumni in a given class are surveyed in order to…

This paper describes an emerging model for a comprehensive staff and organizational development program as a continuous and integral activity of the college, and discusses the role of the office of institutional research in such programs. A comprehensive program includes instructional development (instructional evaluation, diagnosis,…

The issue of increasing the effectiveness of alumni development and fund raising programs to ensure quality in academic programs and campus life for the coming decade was examined. The study's primary purposes were to: (1) describe the development of a comprehensive decision support system for alumni and fund raising activities at one independent…

Market analysis can provide a mechanism for making needs assessment functional and for focusing program development on constituencies in the community that need to be served. The main goals of market analysis are to generate usable information, document needs, assign priorities, locate resources, and respond to identified needs in a systematic…

The types and number of faculty cases litigated and reported at state and federal levels for the 1982 calendar year are discussed. From categorical data summaries, suggested institutional research data bases and studies were formulated as advanced planning mechanisms. (Author/MLW)

A market segmentation analysis was conducted on students at a large midwestern urban university using two forms of hierarchical cluster analysis on student characteristics: an agglomerative procedure using a matching-type association measure and a divisive chi-square based automatic interaction detection (CHAID) procedure. Data were extracted from…

The use of an integrated student information system (ISIS) to conduct institutional research at Trinity University is discussed. The types of data contained in the system, which has 59 files, include: student characteristics, recruitment, financial aid, registration, faculty load, and class scheduling. The data for students, faculty, departments,…

This paper reviews the empirical literature regarding factors associated with the development of Institutional Research (IR) offices in community colleges. The IR office is defined as any organizational unit which has at least one half-time staff member given responsibility for the synthesis and reporting of institutional data, is visibly…

This study examined: first, the impetuses college faculty respond to as they propose new degree programs; and, second, whether these impetuses can be correlated with the components of either resource dependence or institutional theory. It also examined implications of "vertical extension" (whereby institutions extend their academic…

The development of a faculty information system at Carnegie Mellon University is traced using a case study approach. Attention is focused on the process of system design by committee, the resulting relational database, and its impact on institutional research and university reporting. Technical implementation and details of the system design are…

Different approaches employed to automate the administrative recordkeeping processes within academic departments at three University of California campuses are contrasted: the University of California at Berkeley, the University of California at Los Angeles, and the University of California at Santa Barbara. The results are based on campus…

With the decline of enrollment at a number of community colleges there is a demand for accurate enrollment projections, yet enrollment is increasingly difficult to forecast. Student body composition has changed markedly from the traditional 18 year old group as the percentage of women and part-time students and students' ages have increased. Also,…

The role of institutional research in the creation and operation of an information center is discussed, along with the ways in which the spread of information centers within higher education is likely to influence the future development of institutional research. Forces leading to the emergence of information centers are advances in computer…

There are several signs that a college can use to determine if a program needs evaluation from a consumer point of view. Answers to the following questions can be very revealing: How many students start the program per year? How many graduate per year? What do they do when they graduate? How much money do they make? How long do they remain in the…