AIR Survey Fact: Centralized and Shared IR Office Responsibilities
Fred Volkwein (volkwein@psu.edu), Jim Woodell (jkw168@psu.edu) and Ying Liu (yxl226@psu.edu), Pennsylvania State University
In this feature, Fred Volkwein, Jim Woodell and Ying Liu of Pennsylvania State University share selected findings from the AIR survey of IR, Assessment and Planning offices conducted in 2008. The editors thank Fred and his colleagues for this contribution. Comments and questions about this feature are welcome and may be addressed to Fred at volkwein@psu.edu.
This month, we analyze the tasks and work activities of IR offices from the AIR Survey of IR offices. On the survey we asked offices to indicate the analytical tasks that they conducted throughout the year on a scale that indicates the extent to which these activities are centralized in IR versus shared with some other office or offices. For the survey, we developed an inventory of 77 analytical responsibilities grouped into six categories as follows:
| • | 14 types of General Reporting Responsibility |
| • | 9 types of Technology and Database Administration |
| • | 7 types of Academic Affairs Research and Analysis |
| • | 12 types of Administration and Finance Analysis |
| • | 12 types of Strategic Planning and Enrollment Management Studies |
| • | 23 types of Assessment, Effectiveness, Evaluation, and Accountability Studies |
Analysis of responses from over 1,100 offices in 2008 reveals that there is a core of relatively centralized analytical tasks that are conducted by the majority of IR offices around the country. The following tables show responses for all survey respondents.
Table 1 summarizes the top 12 centralized tasks. The majority of these centralized IR activities relate to collecting and reporting campus and national data [coordinating national survey data collection (77%), using the IPEDS peer analysis system (74%), maintaining/producing the campus factbook (73%), responding to guidebooks (67%) and federal/state data requests (67%), exchanging data (62%), reporting student characteristics (63%), enrollments (49%), and degrees awarded (58%)].
Thus, IR “owns” and is solely responsible for tasks that are mostly in the category of general reporting and involve expertise that we judge to be largely descriptive in nature (as distinct from analytical). The centralized IR activities that are perhaps more analytical than descriptive include attrition/retention/graduation analyses (67%), peer bench marking (67%), analyzing national databases (66%), studying student engagement (60%) and student satisfaction (59%).
A more complete picture of IR work appears in Table 2 where we summarize the responsibilities that IR offices share with others across the campus. Here we see not only a higher proportion of IR office involvement, but also a larger array of analytical tasks. For example, over 90% of IR offices are engaged in activities related to institutional and departmental self-study and accreditation. Over 80% of IR offices collaborate with relevant others on studies of student satisfaction and progress, performance indicators and goal attainment, and administrative policy research.
Other areas of frequent IR collaboration include student tracking (79%), maintaining web-based facts (78%), compiling unit level performance indicators (75%), environmental scanning (73%), database maintenance (72%), and studies of freshmen (68%), students (67%), and alumni (58%).
The profile shown in Table 2 suggests that sharing analytical tasks with other offices in the institution is a valuable component of IR work. Noting in our earlier reports that over 70% of IR offices have fewer than four professional staff, these results may reflect the need for such collaboration as a healthy coping mechanism for sparse staffing.