This chapter will value of including diverse voices of researchers. An innovative, cost-effective model for assessment will be described, capturing the process implemented at a university in its efforts to center social justice within assessment and evaluation research practices.

This chapter examines the current pressures and realities in higher education assessment and highlights one campus' effort toward equipping faculty to move toward a learner-centered approach in teaching, learning, and assessment. It proposes a model of faculty development that integrates best practices of professional development with cultivating…

This chapter provides a framework for grounding social justice principles at the center of learning in higher education program assessment and evaluation courses. Pedagogical reflections are drawn from the classroom experiences of three faculty of color who represent diverse institutional, programmatic, and geographic contexts. Their advanced…

This chapter focuses on IR's role in coordinating a pilot of the Degree Qualifications Profile (DQP) for assessment in a new master's degree program and provides guidance on frameworks that can be used, important technical considerations, and ways IR can be involved to advance the use of rubrics as a primary program assessment tool.

This chapter provides examples of innovative methods and tools to collect, analyze, and report both quantitative and qualitative data in student affairs assessment.

This chapter presents a synthesis of the conceptualization and practice of institutional research (IR) in higher education (HE) in emerging countries across Southern Africa, Latin America and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) regions. The chapter contextualizes the growing need for IR in these regions, identifies problems and challenges…

In 1933-1934, a few years before the landmark study on student achievement by Learned and Wood (1938), the total enrollment of students in colleges, universities, junior colleges, teachers colleges, and normal schools was around 1.06 million out of a U.S. population of about 126.5 million, or about 0.8 percent. In 2008, the total projected fall…

Multilevel modeling provides several advantages over traditional ordinary least squares regression analysis; however, reporting results to stakeholders can be challenging. This article suggests some strategies for presenting complex, multilevel data and statistical results to institutional and higher education decision makers. The article is…

Student learning assessment has become one of the central issues of public policy and accountability in higher education. Since the mid-1980s, a number of federal and state commissions and policy organizations have emphasized the importance of assessment for a variety of institutional practices, including student retention, graduation rates, and…

A diverse society has created a diverse education system, which in turn requires diverse and complex mechanisms of quality control. The diversity and complexity of the industrial, service, and knowledge-based economy, with its vast variety of occupations and dynamic labor markets, heavily influences the curricular structures and academic profiles…

The value of qualitative assessment approaches has been underestimated primarily because they are often juxtaposed against long-standing quantitative traditions and the widely accepted premise that the best research produces generalizable and statistically significant findings. Institutional researchers avoid qualitative methods for at least three…

Institutional research (IR) in Latin America is experiencing dramatic growth due, in no small measure, to the need for quality assurance in educational institutions developing trained workforces for emerging economies. Quality can be assured only where it can be measured, and that is at the core of institutional research in countries to the south…

Considering accountability, affordability, and access through the experiences in Chile, East Asia, Australia, Croatia, and the United States offers a clear reminder that trends and issues in higher education are often more similar across national contexts than they are distinct. Across higher education, institutions and systems are responding to…

Programs that serve underrepresented minority students have long faced many challenges. Prior to the late 1970s, higher education institutions reserved academic program slots for underrepresented minority students because these students had limited access to opportunities that afforded them credentials that their white counterparts could more…

A general context for defining and using goals in institutional research is discussed, contributions of authors in this journal issue are reviewed, and implications for research are examined. (Author/LBH)