Office of Research & Reporting

The Reporting Role

This document attempts to outline the areas and extent of the Research and Reporting Office’s involvement in responding to internal and external requests for information about North Central Texas College. The "General Principles" presented here are followed by very important "Exceptions," and examples are provided to help clarify. It is our hope that these guidelines will be a starting point for discussions about the best way of accomplishing the goal of providing appropriate and meaningful information that is accurate to those who need it.

While reporting is often done through the Research and Reporting Office, it should be remembered that this office is first and foremost a research office. The office seldom "owns" the data that it uses. While all data on campus is theoretically open to this office, the Research and Reporting staff must take special care to use it correctly and wisely. There will necessarily be frequent consultations with the data owners. Therefore, the Research and Reporting staff must depend on the expertise, guidance, cooperation, and good will of the owners of the data in each area.

Managing Data

If you need to create a data file of your survey responses, the best approach may be determined by the analytical tool you plan to use. If you're going to do simple spreadsheet sorts and counts, you might want to enter the data right into a spreadsheet. Some databases and statistical software packages have data entry functions or add-ons that can be used.

Database packages often have components to make data entry easier, and some have simple reporting functions as well (eg Filemaker or MS Access). Or the database can then be exported for analysis using a different tool.

Data can also be entered into a text file (using Notepad on a PC or TextEdit or TextWrangler on a Mac, for example), that can be read by a statistical package.

One of the most flexible options is to enter the data into a spreadsheet, where each row represents a question (or question option, in the case of a "check all that apply" item), and each column represents a respondent. This format can be imported or read directly by many other packages, or the file can be saved as a .txt file.

Analyzing Data

What tool you use to analyze your survey data depends on the purpose of the survey and the kinds of analyses you wish to perform. Simple descriptive summaries can be accomplished with a number of packages, but more sophisticated statistics will require a statistical software package.

Microsoft Excel is a great choice for getting started. This electronic spreadsheet program allows users to enter, store, organize and manipulate date. It can also be used to create charts, pivot tables and for financial analysis.

NCTC currently provides access to Zogotech, which is an excellent interactive data analysis program. Data reports are setup to automatically refresh and publish to Zogotech, so the most current information is available.

Another program to consider is Power BI, a business analytics service provided by Microsoft, that will soon be available. Power BI is an analytic tool to help analyze and visualize data and create reports and dashboards that can also be shared across our organization.

These packages are supported to some degree by ITS, so you wouldn't want to purchase anything before checking into availability and access. Access to both Zogotech and Power BI would need to be requested by submitting a ticket to ITS with supervisor approval.

Except for requests from the news media, which should go through the Marketing & Public Relations Office, all external requests for official or public data should go through Research and Reporting. Whether the Research and Reporting office completes the request or coordinates the request with another office will be based on their expertise in the topic area, access to relevant NCTC data, and expertise in working with the particular NCTC data.

What is data?
"Data" refers to numerical summaries of aspects of our institution, for example, number of students enrolled, graduation rates, or percentage of faculty who are women. Examples of information that would generally not be considered data are directory information about staff or faculty, or narrative descriptions of programs, policies, or facilities.

What are official or public data?
Figures are considered official or public if they are mandated by state or federal guidelines (e.g. the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board or "THECB"; the national Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, or "IPEDS"); are collected routinely by recognized higher education agencies or consortia; or will appear in publications that are widely available (e.g. admissions guidebooks).

Exceptions: With the exception of THECB and IPEDS reporting, mandated routine reporting specific to an individual area should be conducted by that area. The responsible official in that area should, however, consult with Research and Reporting whenever figures outside of that area (e.g. enrollments) are required for a form. Examples of reporting that should be conducted not by Research and Reporting, but by the appropriate office include: athletics reporting, crime reporting, tax forms, human resource work utilization reporting, etc. In general, straightforward office-to-agency reports should go through the appropriate office. If the information requested on a form may be of general interest or may be made public, it would be helpful if a copy were provided to Research and Reporting. When information may be used in various other ways, the Research and Reporting office should be involved.

Who gathers the data?
Whether a particular external request should be handled by Research and Reporting versus sent to another office for completion will be based on the Research and Reporting office's knowledge of the area, access to the data, and knowledge of the data. For example, currently most state and federal reporting are coordinated through Research and Reporting. This does not mean that the Research and Reporting office completes every form himself/herself. A number of forms are sent to other officials on campus for their response and returned to Research and Reporting for forwarding to the requesting agency. On these forms, it is generally the official who completes the form who signs off on it. Examples of this are the IPEDS-Finance Form and the IPEDS Library Form. The Research and Reporting officer does complete forms for other kinds of data, including student enrollments, degrees, degree programs offered, graduation rates, and student residency.

Area Knowledge: This guideline will depend on the staff in Research and Reporting and the role of institutional research at the College. An institutional researcher is bound by a professional code of ethics to not accept assignments outside of his or her realm of expertise. At the same time he/she should seek training in areas deemed by the institution to be important to the Institutional Research role. In areas where the Research and Reporting officer has some knowledge or expertise, it may be reasonable for him or her to fulfill a request. In areas where the Research and Reporting officer does not have expertise, it should be sent to the appropriate expert on campus.

Access to Data: In the situations where the Research and Reporting officer has little or no access to the particular type of data, he/she should not attempt to complete a request, but rather forward it to the appropriate office. One example of this is data about the Library. Currently, these data are not centrally maintained and are not accessible to the Research and Reporting office. Requests for such information will be sent to the Librarian or his/her designee. Access involves not only being able to retrieve data, but also access to the data coding and field definitions. Though the Research and Reporting office theoretically has access to all data in the Jenzabar system, it does not necessarily have a complete "dictionary" of what all the data fields mean, how they are populated, and how they relate to each other. Where this kind of mapping has not been made available, data, though technically accessible, cannot be used.

Knowledge of the Data: It makes sense for the Research and Reporting office to be the one reporting data that is commonly used by the Research and Reporting office, because in order to use these data effectively the Research and Reporting officer should be very knowledgeable about it. This is more than knowledge or expertise in a particular area - it is about knowing the particular data on this campus very well, both in form and in content. The Research and Reporting officer is therefore in a position to accurately provide meaningful information about these areas to outsiders.

Increasingly we are asked to participate in research on higher education by everyone from dissertation students to higher education agencies. These requests may range from completing a simple one page form to providing very complex historical data to providing data files at the individual level. NCTC must balance the value of the research effort to the public, to the higher education community, and to itself against the burden it presents on College resources (especially staff time) in responding. (This discussion is not meant to include the more informal peer-to-peer type of requests, e.g. queries posted on electronic discussion lists).

Because of the expertise of the Research and Reporting office in conducting higher education research, any request for such a study should go to the Research and Reporting office for a response strategy. In cases where the institutional burden is minimal, the Research and Reporting office may make the decision of whether or not to participate. In cases where the institutional burden is higher, he/she will notify the Chancellor's Executive Team, telling them:

1. Who is requesting the study

2. Nature of the data requested

3. The purpose and intended use of the information

4. What offices will need to be involved and to what extent

5. What peer institutions are known to be participating

6. Deadline(s) for responding

7. Benefits (if any) of participation

8. His/Her recommendation regarding NCTC's participation

Chancellor’s Executive Team should then inform the Research and Reporting office of its judgment, or whether it needs to be discussed further. (A subset of this group most closely involved with the subject matter may be consulted in lieu of the full group.) If the Research and Reporting office decides that NCTC should participate in the study, the Research and Reporting office will notify all affected offices immediately, providing them with all the relevant materials. If the Research and Reporting officer will be directly involved in providing data, he/she may serve as the study liaison, coordinating the responses of other involved offices. If the Research and Reporting officer is not involved in providing data, a judgment will be made whether the response should go through him/her or whether it would be more appropriate for another officer on campus to serve as the liaison, using the same guidelines as described above under "exceptions."

These issues lead to the question of who should respond when an internal requestor needs information. For example, when the Research and Reporting office and the ITS Department have equal access, expertise, and facility to respond to a particular data request, who should do it?

General Principle: Research and Reporting should conduct research and analysis in support of planning and decision-making critical to the College. Providing raw data for others to use, and providing simple summaries can be research or a reporting function. For example, a request for simple trends over time in enrollments in science courses can be done by the Registrar's office. Examining those trends to see if differences by gender are statistically significant, and comparing it with national data would normally be done by the Research and Reporting office. The Research office does not have the authority to release to anyone data on individuals (students, faculty, staff, etc.). Requests for data about individuals should go to the responsible office which may include the Reporting part of the Research Office.

Exceptions

Official data: Research and Reporting should usually assemble data that should be based on "official" figures. (Example: Degrees awarded in the sciences for use in a grant proposal.)

Information across areas: Research and Reporting should conduct most analyses that involve combining data across areas. (Example: Relating retention and graduation rates to SAT scores and financial aid received.)

Public Data: Research and Reporting should usually assemble data that will appear publicly and therefore ought to be consistent with "official" figures. (Example: Fact Sheet, total enrollments that appear in Admissions publications.)