This article highlights the utility of disaggregating qualitative research and assessment data on Asian American college students. Given the complexity of and diversity within the Asian American population, scholars have begun to underscore the importance of disaggregating data in the empirical examination of Asian Americans, but most of those…

In this article, the author argues that current strategies to study and understand students' identities fall short of fully capturing their complexity. A multi-dimensional perspective and a mixed-methods approach can reveal nuance that is missed with current approaches. The author offers an illustration of how mixed-methods research can promote a…

This article focuses on describing how institutional researchers can use qualitative cultural assessments to better understand the role that their campus cultures play in shaping individual and group behaviors and experiences. A special emphasis is given to the implications of institutional diversity in the processes of designing and conducting…

The value of qualitative assessment approaches has been underestimated primarily because they are often juxtaposed against long-standing quantitative traditions and the widely accepted premise that the best research produces generalizable and statistically significant findings. Institutional researchers avoid qualitative methods for at least three…

Internal institutional auditing can improve effectiveness and efficiency and protect an institution's assets. Many of the concepts and techniques used to analyze higher education institutions are qualitative in nature and suited to institutional research, including fiscal, operational, data-processing, investigative, management consulting,…

Efforts to assess quality of academic life at Vanderbilt University (Tennessee) resulted in a plan to merge qualitative and quantitative measures and uncovered political, logistical, and fiscal issues in collection and use of the two kinds of data. Although qualitative databases are costly, they are also very useful in different ways. (Author/MSE)