This paper introduces institutional ethnography (IE) as a useful and systematic process for examining organizations and work data through the lens of stakeholders, at different levels, and considering the different forces at play. Drawing from ethnomethodology, IE focuses on how everyday experience is socially organized. Ideological shifts have…

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…

This report presents the findings of a research study conducted by Alvin Community College (ACC) as a subcontractor for Project FOLLOW-UP, which analyzed orientation and exit interview effects and their relationship to follow-up research on selected withdrawing and graduating students at ACC. Subjects of the study were 595 ACC students, 257 males…

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…

This study evaluated accuracy of the assumption of the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) that higher education students of unknown race or ethnicity should be distributed over the remaining resident categories in the proportion of those whose race/ethnicity is known. This study endeavored to estimate the error associated with any…

Although the primary purpose of this report is to present prototypical procedures for conducting two-year college vocational follow-up studies, it also describes the implementation and results of using these procedures in the evaluation of the electronics, computer science, and tool and manufacturing programs at Los Angeles Pierce College. After…

Marketing in the business world has long used focus group interviews and survey techniques to explore the attitudes, behaviors, and perceptions of their customers. In the college setting, these same techniques are now being used to improve program quality, assess the effectiveness of publications, and explore the image of the college. At Durham…