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Institutional research is a broad category of work done at schools, colleges and universities to inform campus decision-making and planning in areas such as admissions, financial aid, curriculum assessment, enrollment management, staffing, student life, finance, facilities, athletics, and alumni relations.
Institutional researchers collect, analyze, report, and warehouse quantitative and qualitative data about their institution's students, faculty, staff, curriculum, course offerings, and learning outcomes. They are involved in collecting and reporting information to government bodies , to the public , and various college guide publishers. On occasion, institutional researchers share data with one another to compare their own practices and outcomes against those of similar institutions. Institutional research is the source of much of the information provided to regional and national accreditation bodies to document how institutions fulfill the standards for accreditation.
In addition to reporting, institutional researchers often engage in data analysis, ranging from simply testing whether differences in reported data are statistically significant to developing and using causal and predictive statistical models. Such models are often used in support of assessment and strategic enrollment management.