This paper presents the best practices used by institutional review boards (IRBs) and human research protections programs (HRPPs) to prepare online graduate student investigators for human research protections specific to research within online graduate degree programs or where research supervisors are not proximal to graduate student…

Recent and rapid technological advances have given rise to an explosive growth of data, along with low-cost solutions for accessing, collecting, managing, and analyzing data. Despite the advances in technology and the availability of data, social work organizations routinely encounter data-related problems that have an impact on their…

Students have many options as they leave high school and enter postsecondary education or the workforce. But during the six years that the Data Quality Campaign has reviewed report cards from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, it has been found that states have struggled to provide a robust picture of all of these options on their report…

Across all social science disciplines, but in particular public administration, there is a shared concern about the costs of using traditional random samples to generate data, and its impact on researchers' ability to engage in "quality" research. As a result of these costs, more academics, practitioners, and students are turning to…

The theory of practice architectures is a useful theoretical, methodological and analytical tool for educational research. The use of the theory is emerging as germane in early childhood education research. This article explores concepts from the theory as applied in an early childhood education research project. The article focuses on the concept…

In an increasingly data-driven world, large volumes of fine-grained data are infiltrating all aspects of our lives. The world of education is no exception to this phenomenon: in classrooms, we are witnessing an increasing amount of information being collected on learners and teachers. Because educational practitioners have so much contextual and…

In this new Policy Note, Rachel Hewitt, HEPI's Director of Policy and Advocacy, highlights the need to distinguish between mental health and well-being and calls for more comprehensive data to be made available on the well-being of all those work and study at universities. Key points: (1) The conflation of mental health and well-being is not…

The National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) has available for research a large data warehouse of enrollment and graduation information from 1993 to the present for nearly all postsecondary students in the United States. In this most recent academic year, 18 million currently enrolled students alone were added to the database. Some of the following…

Increasingly students, particularly those in the social sciences, work with survey data collected through a more complex sampling method than a simple random sample. Failing to understand how to properly approach survey data can lead to inaccurate results. In this article, we describe a series of online data visualization applications and…

This new TICAS (The Institute for College Access & Success) report details existing requirements that govern the calculation and provision of post-college employment metrics, documents weaknesses in existing data, and recommends federal and state policy changes to support comparable, accurate, accessible information for measuring post-college…

The following case study describes a research project that used survey data from the National Survey of Student Engagement to examine the relationship between student engagement in higher education and institutional rank as reported by "U.S. News," "Forbes," and "Washington Monthly." The research article was presented…

With over 37 million residents, California is the most populous state in the country. California's primary and secondary schools enroll over 6.2 million students,1 and there are 3.4 million undergraduates attending 683 postsecondary institutions in California. Yet, because of the lack of a strong data infrastructure, we are unable to answer basic…

The real data on students' postsecondary outcomes are affordable, accessible, and unfortunately underutilized. If harnessed for advising high school students before graduation, these data could significantly change the approach to preparing students for college and career success across the country. How can we get more leaders and stakeholders to…

Since 2004, U.S. states have collected information from former students with disabilities about their employment and further education activities in the first year after leaving high school. About one year after they leave school, young adults who had Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) are asked some very important questions: Are they…

Analysis of student-level data to inform policy and promote student success is a core function of executive higher education agencies. Postsecondary data systems have expanded their collection of data elements for use by policymakers, institutional staff, and the general public. The State Higher Education Executive Officers association (SHEEO), as…