As federal guidelines have increased reporting demands on all sectors of education (United States Department of Education [USDOE], 2015) and state reporting requirements have expanded as legislatures call for performance-based funding (National Conference of State Legislatures, 2015), the need for institutional research offices has become the norm in higher education. Therefore, it is critical that education administrators understand how the IR function affects organizational change to be able to use the function of the office to its best ability. Two studies (Knight, 2010; Knight, Moore, Coperthwaite, 1997) imply that the ability of an institutional research agent to function as a change agent is a measure of their effectiveness. Thus, one measure of an IR agents' effectiveness is their ability to help senior administrators bridge the gap between interpreting data and creating change. However, few studies have explored the experience of using data as a catalyst for organizational change from the perspective of IR professionals. Thus, the purpose of this phenomenological study is to describe the perceptions of institutional research agents working within the Mississippi public community college system regarding how data contribute to organizational change within their colleges. The findings of this study are the rich descriptions of the perceptions of these IR agents. The coresearchers described the experience of data contributing to organizational change as a process of moving from data collection to problem identification to problem solving and ultimately to implementation. The IR agents provide details on how organizational culture and organizational structure impacts their work within their organization. Based on the findings of this study, there are several recommendations for community colleges wanting to better utilize data for organizational change. First, colleges should remove barriers for IR agents accessing the college's data. Additionally, the college's organizational structure should have the head of the IR department as few organizational steps from the president as possible. Also, IR offices need to be large enough to support the data analysis and training needs of the college. Lastly, the college's culture needs to encourage a community of sharing successes. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com.bibliotheek.ehb.be/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]