Twenty-seven key resources for understanding, researching, and managing organizational climates and cultures are cited and described. The articles, books, and monographs reflect a relatively recent wave of interest in culture as a tool for understanding organizational settings. (Author/MSE)

An analysis of student decisions to withdraw from specific courses before assignment of grades but after the "add-drop" period at the University of Minnesota is presented. In a probit model, withdrawals appear to occur randomly, with notable exceptions. Student, class, and teacher characteristics are considered as variables related to…

Institutional researchers are often called on to compare financial performance across institutions as part of comprehensive institutional management teams. Several types and sources of national data, including databases and publications, are appropriate for this, each with particular strengths and limitations. Three sources also provide…

Suggests that organizational effectiveness research has made considerable progress in empirically deriving a systematic framework of theoretical and practical utility in Australian higher education. Offers a taxonomy based on the competing values framework and discusses use of inter-organizational comparisons and profiles for diagnosis in…

Ohio University's experience with assessment has had two phases: the first was devoted to providing university-wide assessment information to faculty and staff; the second to supporting individual academic units' needs for assessment information. While assessment is a tool used by the university to refocus its publicly perceived primary mission of…

A study concerning performance indicators in five New Zealand higher education institutions had staff in administration, libraries, and an academic department identify appropriate measures of performance for mechanistic activities. For some activities, particularly at senior levels, mechanistic measures are found inappropriate and impractical;…

Student affairs research is useful only if it leads to improvement in students' education and lives. This requires effective communication of research results to the people who set policy and implement student affairs programs. Addresses these communication issues and explores how to get the word out and market the results of student affairs…

Faculty, staff, and students at the University of Auburn combined efforts to help students become more successful both during and after their college experience. The Student Success Center was created to address personal, academic, and career needs through an integrated service delivery model offering services, programs, and support at key moments…

Explains the institutional research process used by the Oregon University System to identify peer comparators for the state's seven diverse public universities. The process combined detailed statistical information with a sensitivity to the political dynamics and judgments of campus presidents and staff. Identifies 10 conditions that contribute to…

External and internal forces are driving institutions not only to create departments and positions that specialize in planning, quality improvement, and institutional research but also to link them within a systems context.

This chapter provides some examples and recommendations for expanding the connections between economics and institutional research. (Contains 1 figure.)

The benefits of all-day kindergarten are increasingly supported by educational policy groups. Rigorous, prospective empirical research is impractical for schools of limited fiscal means where education must take priority over institutional research. However, post-hoc analyses of archival and informal measures can provide invaluable information…

In theory, not-for-profit organizations will be characterized by higher production costs per unit of output than for-profit producers of otherwise-identical goods/services, since profit maximization implies cost minimization per unit of output; breaking even does not imply cost minimization and, indeed, may imply inflated costs. We explore the…

Previous research has concluded that an institution's ranking in the annual "U.S. News and World Report" "Best Colleges" issue impacts admission outcomes and pricing decisions at schools in the Consortium for Financing Higher Education. This article expands on the previous work by analyzing the effects of the "U.S. News and World Report" rankings…

Goffin discusses the new commission and its tasks and how the new standards and criteria will differ from the current ones. She requests that members contribute their input on this important aspect of the NAEYC accreditation transition.