Institutional Research and Analysis Lecture

Earlier in the year, I attended a lecture by the people who work on the institutional research and analysis at Carnegie Mellon. They gather statistical data about the university, students, faculty, programs, etc., analyze it, and the university uses it to make improvements. Most of their data comes from surveys, which is why they repeatedly emphasized how important it is for students to participate in surveys provided by CMU. Most people do not take those surveys, because they believe that their input goes into a black whole, and they think that it is a waste of time. However, that is not the case. First of all, the questions were carefully created to get the most specific results possible. And after the data is collected, it is thoroughly analyzed, conclusions are drawn, and improvements are made accordingly.

During the lecture, they explained how survey questions are created. It is not a simple process, because you do not get to simply talk to people, and all you get back is a rank or other type of short answer that later must be interpreted. Generated questions go through rigorous testing before a survey is conducted.

They also showed some data collected over the past few years about students' opinions of the university, classes, professors, and themselves. Then they explained how they interpret the results and draw conclusions. For each set of data, students were grouped based on appropriate characteristics. For example, if the survey was about schoolwork and classes, the students were grouped by their school. If it was about assessment of personal growth, the groups were divided by grade level.

I do not remember all the details of the presentation, but all the data can be found at https://www.cmu.edu/ira/index.html