Associate Dean of Faculty for Institutional Research & Assessment Gordon Hewitt and Assistant Director of Institutional Research Chau-Fang Lin recently co-edited a volume of New Directions for Institutional Research.
The special issue, “Starting and Sustaining Meaningful Institutional Research at Small Colleges and Universities: Theory and Practice,” also includes Narren Brown of South Central College and Ruth Vater of Beloit College as co-authors. The articles focus on the differences of institutional research work in a small college or university setting versus a large one.
“I’m Meltiiiiiing…”: The Decline of Response Rates and the Impact of Nonresponse Bias on the Results of National Surveys at Small Colleges,” by Hewitt and Lin, along with Professor of Economics Julio Videras, appears as a chapter in the volume.
The paper explores the effects of low response rates in survey data and the potential effects of nonresponse bias at small colleges. The authors illustrate the burden of this challenge by focusing on how these two phenomena could impact policy development on campus.
