Institutional Research

Institutional Research

Institutional research (IR) is any qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methodology research activity undertaken in a college, university, hospital, or other institutional setting that produces data, information, or knowledge in support of the institution’s efforts to measure the effectiveness of its mission, goals, and objectives.

Instructional Research was conceived during the 1950s as a mechanism for centralizing and facilitating the compilation, analysis, and reporting of data regarding an individual college or university, and since that time Instructional Research has also been adopted by companies and organizations outside the world of education.

Instructional Research is conducted in a collaborative manner similar to action research where the members of the Instructional Research office will work with their colleagues from across the organization in planning research and assessment activities and in the actual collection, analysis, and interpretation of data.

As practiced within the context of institutional effectiveness, Instructional Research personnel help their peers (a) to identify mission-critical policies, programs, personnel, and performances to assess; (b) to collect, analyze, and interpret relevant data; and (c) to use the results of the analysis to improve or enhance the institution.

 

Institutional Review and Qualitative Research

Qualitative research methodologies and methods are used in IR to provide useful insights regarding perspectives of board members, personnel, customers, and other stakeholders critical to institutions and to give context to the numbers. Qualitative research is useful when measuring complex phenomena such as leadership and brand and when gaining insights into diverse academic cultures.

Qualitative methodologies can also help to bring both the researchers and the decision makers closer to the research participants, and through this greater proximity can come thicker and richer descriptions, interpretations, explanations, and understandings of stakeholder expectations and needs.

Historiography

Historiography

Historiography is concerned with historical interpretations and representations of the past—put another way, the writing of history as opposed to history itself. Although historiography is primarily a disciplinary phrase introduced by contemporary academics, the inquiry it represents can be traced back to the very earliest origins of historical writing in the work o ancient Greek writers who reflected on each others’ historical conclusions.

Historiography reflects on the theories and philosophies that inform and motivate them and how they both might influence the conclusions drawn. This reflection might involve, for example, critical reflection of the authenticity, subjectivity, and authority of various information sources.

As a practice, historiography has progressed and changed. Over recent years, it has moved from practical concerns on data sources to include far greater consideration of these aforementioned contexts and forces.

As the social sciences have gradually become more interested in historical reflection, historiography has played an important role in the development of sub disciplines such as historical sociology, historical geography, and historical economics in terms of reflecting both on how social sciences influence history and on how they represent history (and the people and groups who make history—such as women, working classes, and numerous ethnicities and cultures).

Historiography—both as a critical way of writing history and as a reflection on the writing of history—has involved the use of a range of methods, often in combination, which includes the use of archived material and written historical accounts (including research, autobiographies, memoirs, diaries, and oral histories).

For more recent historiographies, representation in the television, media, and other forms of mass communication might also be consulted. The distinguishing factor, however, in historiographers’ uses of these sources is a critical comparison and critical perspective on their origins, uses, and biases.

Historical Research

Historical Research

Any contemporary issue is bound intrinsically with the social and historical milieu of the past. Most historical research involves some type of conceptual idea, theme, or person in history.

This entry discusses the stages in historical research design, the types of data used, and the forms such research can take. It also explores issues in the evaluation and analysis of such data and briefly reviews the impact of technology on historical research.

Historiography goes beyond data gathering to analyze and develop theoretical and holistic conclusions about historical events and periods. It includes a critical examination of sources, interpretation of data, and analysis that focuses on the narrative, interpretation, and use of valid and reliable evidence that supports the study conclusions.

Historical research has 5 different stages:

1)The first stage of a historical study is the identification of a researchable phenomenon and includes reading relevant literature, listening to present ideas about the phenomena, and even more important, reflecting on the researcher’s interest.

2) The second stage involves developing hypotheses or research questions and identifying a theoretical perspective to guide the data collection process and interpretation of results. A theoretical framework can provide a guide for the historical study, both in data collection and analysis.

3) The third stage is the data exploration and collection stage, which can be the most time- and laborintensive part of the research process depending on the subject and accessibility of data sources.

4) The fourth stage, following data collection, includes fact-checking, evaluation of the validity and reliability of data, and the analysis of evidence from each source. During this stage, the researcher evaluates the data, including the analysis and meaning of missing data, and forms generalizations. It is at this stage that the researcher answers the research question or accepts or rejects the hypotheses and forms conclusions.

5) The fifth and final stage of historical research involves the writing of the report in which findings are described along with their interpretation and which provides detailed supportive evidence in defense of the conclusions.

We have Primary and secondary sources in historical research and data analysis.

 

Historical Discourse Analysis

Historical Discourse Analysis

Historical discourse analysis is a poststructuralist approach to reading and writing history; a mode of conceptualizing history through a theorized lens of critique. Historical discourse analysis works against the objectivist fallacy of traditional positivist historical methods in decentering the authority of the historian as a neutral recorder of facts and the claim of historical writings as objective reconstructions of past events.

The task of the historian is, from this perspective, to uncover and critique the technologies of power that have come to legitimate certain ideas as truths. Historical discourse analysis is a mode of critical social analysis.

 

The Concept of Discourse

Historical discourse analysis is founded on a poststructuralist conception of discourse: an antiessentialist perspective on language, identity, society, and social practices. From this perspective, language and discourse are viewed not as impartial tools that describe reality, but as constitutive modes of power that construct reality in unequal ways, demarcating the center from the periphery, truth from opinion, and reality from interpretation.

Discourses are understood as central modes and components of the production, maintenance, and conversely, resistance to systems of power and inequality; no usage of language is considered a neutral, impartial, or apolitical act.

 

The Role of the Historian

The positivist view of history, which presupposes the historian as an unencumbered subject who stands outside of discourse, is according to Derrida the original fallacy at the heart of Western metaphysics.

Working against the disciplinary assumptions of traditional history (scientific historiography or historical realism), historical discourse analysis contests the ideal of the historian as an objective observer or recorder of facts, an author who stands outside the texts she or he reads and writes.

 

Uses of Historical Discourse Analysis

Historical discourse analysis is used generally to trace the ways in which the particular discursive devices found in examined texts or discourses functioned to construct certain normative ideas and views of events and people. Such analyses tend to examine both formal and informal practices of a given period through the examination of the social, political, legal, and disciplinary codes and their discourses to see how a particular category of subject (e.g., the child, the immigrant, the insane, the criminal, the dependent, the homosexual, etc.) and subject categories (e.g., race, culture, gender, age, sexuality, etc.) become constructed.

Thus, to paraphrase cultural studies critic Stuart Hall, the hallmark of historical discourse analysis is the study of discourses as systems of representations.

Because historical discourse analysis is an approach to history rather than a set methodology as such, the specific analytical method for the examination of texts or discourses can vary. Methods of close reading, such as Derridean deconstruction, or the many techniques of discourse analysis in general can be applied to historical texts as ways of analyzing texts or discourses as the means of understanding linguistic practices as social practices.

Historical context

 

Historical context

Historical context refers to past conditions, which influence the present. Most social scientists would agree now that individual behavior is shaped by broader social, economic, political, and physical factors that interact with psychological characteristics in specific place and time.

The historical context refers to political, social, environmental, and cultural decisions or events occurring over time that can be described and linked to the situation under study. Political decisions might include policies that promote warfare, attempt to control population migration, eliminate of social welfare benefits, or decide to move or amalgamate a neighborhood hospital or to introduce a school voucher program—policies that all would have significant consequences for people with limited incomes or for those attempting to improve their life circumstances by crossing national borders to wealthier areas or whose efforts to improve their health and educational status are impaired.

Researchers who examine historical context must find ways of bounding the period of time they are considering. These ways may differ depending on whether researchers are considering relatively recent shifts, as in the case of illegal drug trends or the consequences of the destruction of public housing in Chicago, or long-term trends, as in the case of institutionalized discriminatory practices directed toward specific groups of minority students such as African Americans or Native Americans.