Designed for educational evaluators, this paper discusses reasons for the growing concern with linking or interfacing computers for information sharing; compares three major approaches to linking; and discusses the implications of each. An initial overview presents three linking applications in educational evaluation: (1) linking microcomputers…

Designed to determine to what extent the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) products and services are utilized by certified school personnel, this study found that, on the average, 25.1% of the teachers, librarians, counselors, and administrators in three educational service regions in west central Illinois have used Resources in…

The content of the Public-Use Data Tapes of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is summarized and descriptions of recent research using the database are provided. Since 1969, NAEP has surveyed 9-, 13-, and 17-year-old students and occasionally young adults in assessments of achievement in art, career and occupational…

Instructions for using the computerized Canadian University Student Information System created by Statistics Canada are presented in this manual. The data base includes information on all students registered in Canadian universities, affiliates, and degree-granting colleges. A complete list of all available data elements and column headings that…

The nature and source of problems in distributing access to student data, the strategies adopted for dealing with them, five successful applications implemented by the Office of the Registrar in cooperation with the Information Center, and lessons learned from these projects are described. (Author/MLW)

High schools are increasingly expected to use data for improvement and to provide evidence that programs and instructional practices are preparing all students to develop essential knowledge and skills. This publication describes how schools can develop the capacity to analyze and use data as a core component of improving secondary schools using…

Review of selected studies on use of social science information indicates that social scientists tend to use private sources and informal networks rather than libraries; value of citation studies as guides to library collection building is disputed; and machine access to social science databases is increasing. Eighty references are cited. (EJS)

Few commonly available, successful computer-based tools exist in medical informatics. Faculty expertise can be included in computer-based medical information systems. Computers allow dynamic recombination of knowledge to answer questions unanswerable with print textbooks. Such systems can also create stronger ties between academic and clinical…

Two types of national data sets are described and used to analyze minority student equity in higher education: longitudinal survey data for tracking student persistence and cross-sectional data for monitoring the performance of institutions. Development of additional data sets of institutional characteristics that can provide true explanatory…

The National Science Foundation's Computer-Aided Science Policy and Research database system provides microcomputer-based access and manipulation of multiple national databases for federal and now institutional use. Applications at West Virginia University, Portland State University, and the State University of New York at Buffalo pilot tested the…

Defines and discusses competitive intelligence for business decision making and suggests the use of online databases to start looking for relevant information. The best databases to use are described, designing the search strategy is explained, reviewing and editing results are discussed, and the presentation of results is considered. (LRW)

This study describes the use and value of the major information products and services provided by the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC). These products and services include technical report distribution on an on-demand basis and through the Automatic Document Distribution (ADD) program; secondary information dissemination through online…

An attempt was made to determine who uses data from the Higher Education General Information Survey (HEGIS) and for what purposes. The study objective was to learn if HEGIS is a necessary and useful data base for determining the condition of higher education and developing policy. The quality of the HEGIS data perceived in terms of accuracy,…

Institutional research and the role of information systems are examined and three types of information provided by institutional research offices are discussed: institutional studies, management analyses, and periodic management reports. The varying characteristics of research offices are described and the role of the institutional research office…

Recent technological advances in computers and communications make possible the integration of data systems and the exchange of data among them on an expanding scale. However, the full effect of these advances cannot be realized unless the need for uniform understanding of the common information (data elements) and its expression in data systems…