Higher degree research students and their contributions to society and the economy are well known. However, the recognition of the increasing numbers of such students and the decreasing availability of supervisors implies that traditional individual modes of research supervision are no longer sufficient, while models of cohort supervision have led…

A successful IR leader in the digital institution requires effective communication skills to articulate institutional goals, as well as to collaborate with multiple groups for the design and management of operational tasks. This chapter examines the needed skills of senior IR professionals and how these skills apply within a digital institution.

The expansion of big data and analytics has led to the diffusion of institutional research functions across campus departments. In this new environment, IR professionals expect to lead and coordinate various institutional analyses. This article presents a four-quadrant framework to facilitate the dynamics between data analysis and decision-making.

An awareness of the relevant legal issues and an understanding of the appropriate times to engage legal counsel are essential skills for institutional research (IR) professionals.

We provide an overview of existing and emerging ways that institutional researchers can leverage National Student Clearinghouse data to expand a culture of data-driven decision-making across campus, with a focus on examples from the field.

Despite the case study research method has been widely adopted in qualitative research, few scholarly articles addressed the comprehensive guidance on the use of embedded case study research design. This paper aims to contribute to the literature by demonstrating the use of embedded case study research design in qualitative research. A pseudo case…

The market is full of vendors selling products each designed to solve institutional problems. But how does one choose the right tool for their institution and situation? Topics addressed in this chapter include: how to gauge institutional needs, how to evaluate products, and understand the available institutional resources (current and future).…

Institutional Research (IR) has historically been tasked with fulfilling reporting requirements and information requests that are often transactional. This has changed more recently in light of the ongoing analytics revolution, which has highlighted the need for a more intentional approach to producing and using rigorous evidence to support…

Assessment, accountability, and transparency represent a greater focus than ever in higher education. Community colleges are not exempt from these requirements, though they are overlooked in the creation of state and national assessment instruments. Therefore, we designed and distributed the Perceptions of Community College Assessment (PCCA)…

Given the importance of research communities and research mentoring activities in developing research skills, universities around the world have paid special attention to improving these two dimensions. However, developing research communities and research mentoring culture in Vietnamese universities largely remain at a nascent stage because these…

This article discusses the use of bibliometric indicators for the assessment of individual academics. We focused on national indicators for the assessment of productivity in Polish higher education institutions. We analysed whether institutions (N = 768) adopted national templates for their own sets of criteria for intra-institutional evaluations.…

We conducted a systematic literature review of 111 empirical studies published between 1969 and 2018. We found that research does not exponentially grow in comparison to research on higher education or leadership; empirical research emerging in the 1980s does not completely replace non-empirical inquiry. Studies from English-speaking authors…

As institutions seek to shift into more advanced analytics and data-based decision-support, many institutional research offices face the challenge of meeting the office's current demands while taking on more intricate and specialized work to support decision-making. Given the great need organizations have for information that supports real-time…

Although not a new phenomenon, student swirl and drift continues to grow, and student enrollment patterns are becoming progressively more complex. Many students attend multiple institutions throughout their academic careers, either separately or concurrently, often starting while they are still enrolled in high school. The role of institutional…

The increasing volume of information and the intense pace of its circulation are changing the ways universities access, use, analyze, and provide data. Many have championed the use of large-scale databases to track student admissions and retention, faculty productivity, student wellness, and other phenomena that shape our understandings of higher…