ABSTRACT
Two recent studies from the Association for Institutional Research (AIR) have endeavored to describe the current nature of institutional research (IR). It is important to note that throughout this chapter, IR function refers to any analysis and research conducted about the institution, while the Office of Institutional Research (OIR) is intended to refer to a specific unit on campus. Institutions will address the conditions for effective analytics differently, depending in large part on the structure of their OIR. According to data from the AIR National Survey of Institutional Research Offices, most two- and four-year not-for-profit institutions are structured as highly centralized OIRs, while only about a third of the for-profits have structures that fit this description. The prototypical models the authors have listed likely represent conceptual models of IR that exist in the minds of survey respondents from these institutions as much as, if not more so than, they represent actual organizational structures of employees performing IR functions.
