Stephen Childs gave a presentation on institutional data and analysis. He discussed how institutional research offices can support external research projects by providing data and a research assistant. For projects to be successful, there needs to be clear agreements between the institution and researchers, with commitments of resources from both sides. The research assistant plays a key role in project success but their contributions are often unseen. Communication between institutional analysts and researchers is important to address technical challenges and ensure consistency of the data provided.

1. It’s Show Time!
Are your data ready to be the “next big thing”?
Stephen Childs, Institutional Analyst
CIRPA/PNAIRP 2016, Kelowna, BC
November 7, 2016
Office of Institutional Analysis

2. Who am I?
 Program promised:
—Kaveh Afshar, Education Policy Research Initiative
—Wayne Poirier, Mohawk College
 Instead, I am covering for both of them
 I had Kaveh’s role at EPRI until June 2015
 Working at OIA at University of Calgary
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3. Old Vines & New Shoots
 IR searching for new roles – program evaluation
 New sources of data – e.g. tax linkage

4. Somebody hears about the “next big thing…”
 Researchers looking for data to support a publication
 Can we work out a deal?
 IR office brought in to support the project

5. How to make it work
 More communication
 Agreements, contracts, written expectations
 Buy in across the institution
 A project champion at the institution
 Centralized data and capacity

6. The Research Assistant
 This was my job - all the data work to support research
 Very necessary, but often unsung
 Often they have not been doing this long
 Have a critical role to play in project success

7. Institution Perspective
 Centralized data & available data
 Horizontal and vertical commitment
 Create agreements
—Data sharing agreement
—Project plan – milestones and deliverables
 In-kind resources
—Will you have the personnel to clean the data
 Need a champion

8. Research Group Perspective
 The institutional stuff is largely invisible to them
 Will not have enough resources, competing priorities
 Do not have institutional knowledge
—Give them the calendar
 Want consistency of data
 Well documented data

9. Strategies
 Meet in person with researchers and their team
 Need to sort out the technical challenges
 High quality data leads to more effective research
 No matter what you do, researchers will have to “clean” the
data
 Changing data formats are hard on researchers

10. Technical issues
 Keep all the files you send researchers
 Keep track of the queries used – maybe give to researchers
 Never send data files by e-mail
 Excel encryption is not good enough
 Secure web dropbox – firewall, VPN
 Automatic data validation

11. Research Assistant
 Will never know everything you do to help the project
 Have great research skills and can apply them
 Opportunity to mentor them and learn from them
 They can make great institutional researchers

12. Conclusions
 More evaluation, more research projects
 Need champions, need communication
 Opportunity to grow capacity of IR office