Institutional research (IR) in community/junior colleges in past years has been limited to gathering data for external agencies, concentrating on raw demographic data and student flow studies. IR should be directed toward providing data for administrative decisions and for successful maintenance of college operations. In spite of the heavy demands of state agencies and administrators, IR directors should consider their broader audiences in the education field. By careful reconsideration of methodology and theoretical bases, they could put more rigor into their studies. Better studies would be facilitated by organizing college records for easier computer cross tabulation, by pretesting survey instruments on members of the sample pool, and by selected population sampling. Concentrated effort on a carefully chosen population should result in an 80 percent return, and these results are more valid than those obtained by flooding the mails with questionnaires. Given the well-documented demographic changes in two-year college populations, the IR director has the opportunity to research how the college might change to meet the needs of these new students, how the students' learning sytles can be accommodated, etc. He has the ability to translate vague college goals and student aspirations into useful designs for study. (MJK)