Survey methodology is the dominant approach among universities in the United States for reporting employment outcomes for recent graduates. However, past studies have shown that survey methodology may yield upwardly biased results, which can result in overreporting of employment rates and salary outcomes. This case study describes the development…

This chapter provides institutional researchers a foundation to understand workforce data and how they can be accessed and used within an institutional research operating culture. Specific wage methodologies, earnings reporting, and future directions for using wage data are provided.

There is a steady line of research to understand faculty diversity and its impact on the work life quality of faculty and learning outcomes of students in the U.S. higher education systems. What makes this volume unique is that, rather than treating diversity as a static and simplistic concept, the chapter authors presented information to show…

In most multi-campus studies of college impact that have been conducted over the past four decades, investigators have relied on ordinary least squares (OLS) regression as the analytic method of choice. Recently, however, some investigators have advocated the use of Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM), a method specifically designed for analyses…

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)

A study used a latent variable model with various factors to examine the relationship between college student grades and satisfaction. Results suggest satisfaction is a stronger influence on grades than vice versa. It is recommended that popular recursive models be reevaluated because nonrecursive models may more accurately represent effects.…

After six years of experience with the present instrument, it is contended that the Institutional Goals Inventory can assist institutional researchers in assessing campus sentiment on almost all the goal conceptions that can be reasonably imagined for a given campus. (Author/LBH)

This resource document presents four papers that were prepared by members of the Task Force on Institutional Effectiveness of the Council on Postsecondary Accreditation concerning issues related to assessments of institutional effectiveness and the use of assessment in the process of institutional accreditation. The first paper, "Outcomes…

Criterion development is seen as the perennial issue in evaluation research. No other problem persists in the same way or makes the college or university more vulnerable to outside criticism. The need for subjective agreement among users and interpreters and for giving evidence of validity regarding eventual educational outcomes is noted.…

This analysis illustrates how alumni survey research can assess outcomes for graduates of master's degree programs and also be responsive to program goals, policy concerns of administrators, instructional values of the faculty, and standards of professional practice. Issues related to survey design and analysis are discussed, based on a study of…

This paper briefly reviews the learning outcome aspects of seven recent follow-up studies completed for seven different transfer discipline areas at William Rainey Harper College (Illinois). It notes an increasing interest by the field of institutional research in evaluating how students learn. Faculty in the fields of psychology, English,…

Development of a portfolio of achievement by each student, based on departmental definitions, can satisfy the assessment needs of the student and department faculty. The portfolio is a vehicle for monitoring student progress and initiating synthesis within a field of study. Portfolio building in the fine arts offers an example. (MSE)

Four different college classes at a midwestern university were surveyed in both their freshman and their senior years, with data collected from 2,069 students (a 72% response rate). A student involvement questionnaire (IQ) was used to demonstrate the merit of studying student involvement in a value-added outcomes assessment program by defining…

The development of a computer-based decision support system for outcomes assessment at Southeast Missouri State University is described. A menu-driven, user-based retrieval and analysis and reporting system, the Statistical Analysis System (SAS) was designed. The decision support system incorporates two major components, research group…

The usefulness of the College Outcome Measures Project (COMP), sponsored by the American College Testing Program, was assessed based on a 1979 study of 96 University of Minnesota graduating seniors. Three questions were examined: whether graduates within the same institution but in different curricula achieve different outcome scores; whether…