ABSTRACT
There was growth of a new profession in higher education aimed at supporting the routine data reporting and the strategic management of administrators. Institutional research is considered a practice that supports institutional functioning and administrative decision making, often to promote improved educational outcomes, the better allocation of resources, or stronger campus supports for faculty, staff, and students. Higher education officials then use this organization intelligence to support programmatic decision making and maintain accountability to the relevant governing bodies. The decision-making model flows from a direct application of the data collection, which critically suffers from being an idealized version of decision making. The chapter outlines a handful of the major contributors to the field of knowledge utilization. The conceptualization of knowledge varies across disciplines, such that what it means in an educational setting is distinctly different from what it means in a medical setting.
