Before communicating any information, institutional researchers should answer four diagnostic questions: Who's asking? What for? What's the proper medium? What happens next? (MSE)

Discusses the implications for higher education nationally of the Urban Universities Portfolio Project (UUPP), placing the UUPP within a national agenda to focus attention on student learning, and examining how portfolio development worked from both the "inside out" and the "outside in" to renew this focus. (EV)

Information use can be defined in many ways depending on a variety of organizational, personal, and presentational factors. The experience of evaluation researchers provides some guides for practice. (Author/MSE)

The use of student outcomes data in higher education is discussed. Consideration is given to a widely recognized taxonomy of student outcomes developed by Alexander Astin and his associates, and a classification of outcomes developed by Oscar Lenning and his associates at the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS). Issues…

Successful outcomes assessment programs have many common characteristics. Institutional researchers should examine these signs of success and use them as guides for developing their own campus programs. (Author/MSE)

Enrollment management attempts to coordinate and monitor the programs and policies that influence college enrollment. A model is proposed that is designed to guide a comprehensive research framework that will inform enrollment management decisionmaking by including both student recruitment and retention as contributors to a common database. The…

Successful implementation of assessment requires effective administrative leadership to get started, convert data to information, and use the information in making improvements. Assessment may pay its greatest long-term dividends as an organizational device for directing scarce reserves of institutional attention to teaching and learning. (MLW)

Total Quality Management (TQM) and assessment in higher education both focus on processes to improve educational quality, and both require upper-level leadership's commitment. Guided by the proven principles of TQM, assessment can help institutions develop a mechanism for responding in advance to the challenges ahead. (MSE)

The development of institutional performance indicators in higher education is viewed as part of a broader approach to management information and decision making. The experience of the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems in developing useful information from raw data, selecting appropriate performance indicators, and applying…

Techniques for conducting student-attrition studies using the Student-Outcomes Information Service (SOIS) are outlined. General concepts to effectively guide an institutional research effort are discussed, with attention to better defining student attrition and a summary of results of recent research on the reasons why students withdraw from…

Approaches to college student monitoring have been shaped by changing contexts and evolving technical capabilities, beginning with retention studies and developing into fully relational databases for cohort tracking. Institutional researchers should know this history and be aware of the specific demands for information that future tracking systems…

Some of the most commonly available and widely used tests and questionnaires relevant to campus assessment programs in subject areas, attitudes and satisfaction of students and former students, and other outcomes areas are listed. (MSE)