Wabash and Wabash-affiliated links
Wabash College Institutional Review Board (IRB): The gatekeeper for all research with human participants at the College, including survey research. Those planning to conduct survey research MUST provide documentation to and obtain approval from the IRB.
Higher Education Data Sharing Consortium (HEDS): Operated out of the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts, HEDS is a consortium of colleges and universities that share institutional data. HEDS also administers several student surveys that Wabash periodically participates in.
Data sources
Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) Data Center: By statute, American institutions of higher education must submit data via IPEDS to the Department of Education several times every year. These data are archived in the searchable IPEDS Data Center, which is an excellent resource for finding lots of historical data not only on single institutions, but on any group of institutions that you choose to define.
College Navigator: Also a Department of Education site, this more intuitive interface provides access to the most recent official IPEDS data for an institution of your choosing.
College Scorecard: Part of the Department of Education’s College Affordability and Transparency Center. Provides a searchable database that compares an institution of your choice to national benchmarks on a number of metrics.
National Center for Education Statistics Datalab: Online tools for analysis and visualization of IPEDS data.
Higher Education Data Stories: A fascinating blog maintained by an administrator at DePaul University. An extensive archive of data-based explorations of a wide variety of timely higher education topics, complete with interactive tables and graphs.
Student Surveys
Higher Education Research Institute: The source for three annual surveys of Wabash students – the Freshman Survey, the Your First College Year Survey, and the College Senior Survey. Their publications page includes reports on national trends in their survey data, as well as a variety of special topics.
National Survey of Student Engagement: The source for the NSSE survey, administered to freshmen and seniors at approximately 700 colleges and universities. Click here for a page with links to a number of reports derived from their data.
Assessment and best practices
AAC&U – Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP): An initiative whose purpose is to disseminate information about core learning outcomes and best practices in liberal education, as well as promote systematic assessment of students’ progress in achieving the goals of liberal education.
National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA): An excellent resource for guidance in designing and conducting assessments in higher education.
Accreditation
Higher Learning Commission: Wabash College's accrediting association.
Institutional research
Association for Institutional Research: The major professional association for institutional researchers, with an extensive list of resources for IR work.