Data Release Policy

The Office of Institutional Research has a wide variety of data at its disposal. Most of this data is actually owned by other offices and contains highly confidential and sensitive information. There is also considerable time and effort involved in preparing datasets for external analysis. Therefore, Institutional Research will not release any unit-record data* beyond that which is considered public except under very specific conditions. Normally, all identifiers will be stripped thereby maintaining the confidentiality of the data. The specific conditions are:

1. Requests by trustees, senior administrators, and faculty representatives of standing committees for decision-support, institutional planning and assessment, upon approval by the appropriate senior officer.
2. Requests by recognized researchers for scholarly work, to be considered by IR and the appropriate senior officer. A request for data must include the reason for the research, intended audience, and plans for dissemination and/or publication.

Unit record data will not be released to any other parties. Those requiring general information, or who have questions about this policy are encouraged to speak with the Director of Institutional Research. Institutional Research cannot release unit-record datasets directly to students for classroom use or research purposes.

*Unit-record data: data on individuals rather than groups, where each row of data represents one individual.

1/15/13