Module 6: Finding data

When leading assessment at the divisional level, you may often encounter requests from departments for new information, a new survey or focus group, a new data query, etc. Or you may find yourself yearning for more data to support your decision-making processes. This section reviews steps to consider before gathering new data and strategies for tapping into existing internal or external data sources. 

Questions to consider before beginning the data collection process:

• What is the problem I am trying to address with the assessment? What is the purpose?
• What specific data do I need?
• Does the purpose align with the data needed?
• How will the data be used?
• Who else would benefit from having the data that I am looking for?
• Does someone else already have access to this type of information or related information?
• How recent does the data need to be?

In order to use existing data as a practitioner, it is first necessary to understand what data is available across your department, division, and institution. Web surfing is one way to accomplish this undertaking; however, building relationships with various stakeholders may better serve you in the short and long term. Institutional Research, Student Affairs Assessment professionals, and departmental assessment professionals are key individuals with an understanding of data collection happening in their realms or across the institution. Institutional, divisional, and departmental assessment committees are also great knowledge resources and connections.  

Through building relationships, you can gain insight into pockets of existing data and work collaboratively to ask campus partners to share their data while you reciprocate when possible. For example, if you conduct an EBI survey for Housing and Residential Education and when disaggregating the information you find that students identifying as part of the LGBTQ population are being underserved, you could proactively share that information with the LGBTQ center and work collaboratively to respond to the data. In this example, sharing data is a means to build trust and demonstrate competence. 

As an assessment professional, people may often come to you and say something like, “I want to do a survey asking these questions. Can you send it out to every single human on campus please? Thank you.” We will save discussions around sampling for another section and focus on the power of engaging professionals in dialogue around data collection. Dialogue is a powerful tool for helping professionals think critically about information they want to collect. Asking the right questions is a helpful consulting strategy to use when you are supporting the data collection process. Some possible questions to ask include, “What do you want to learn?”, “How will you use that information?”, “Will that information help you make decisions or is that question coming from a place of curiosity?” These questions and others help staff refine what they want to know from students, help you identify if that information already exists and collect new information if necessary. 

Rarely, as assessment personnel, do you run the programs or services in which you are assessing. For this reason, it is necessary to cultivate consulting skills. The first of these skills is sharing the information in ways that are easily understood and emphasize what your specific audience finds important. A second skill required to apply data to the decisions is to make recommendations, driven by the data, to your audience. This requires gentle language and tremendous political astuteness. You may not want to tell the director of your area that his pet program is failing miserably. Instead, you may want to illustrate that “95% of students recommended improving the program by changing the time to later in the day, providing snacks, and changing the location to the Student Center.” One resources that is particularly powerful in making data usable is an action item template which asks leaders to identify areas of growth, how leaders will respond to that areas, when the response will happen, and who will be responsible/accountable for implementing the change.