Policies for the use of institutional data in a dissertation?

September 6, 2006 8:25 AM

I've been tasked to research universities' policies on providing institutional data for use in a dissertation.

No specifics were given, but I'm assuming this would be non-identifiable (to comply with FERPA) individual data and/or cumulative/average statistics for various groups. Anyone out there have experience with such a policy at any university? Thanks.

posted by assmatt to Education (3 answers total)

I am unclear about what you're asking. What are Unis' policies in providing data about their school to their grad students? What are policies regarding uni's providing research data (from labs on campus) to either their students or outside grad students?

I work at a Uni and for a center within a department at said university. If you called and tried to get our data from some adminisrator then you would have no luck. They don't have our data. If you called the center's director to ask for data it would entirely depend on what you were doing. And if we were going to collobrate on some research, and it was beneficial or interesting to someone working here, then we might share. Depends of course on the funding we got for the original work. Public vs. Private. Private funding usually means we don't own the data and have no rights to share it.
posted by sulaine at 8:34 AM on September 6, 2006

Response by poster: What are Unis' policies in providing data about their school to their grad students?

Yes, that's it. We don't have much research going on so this would be student data applicable towards someone's dissertation/thesis.
posted by assmatt at 8:39 AM on September 6, 2006

The written policy where I work; Section 6 applies to outsiders; section 5 may apply if the student doing the research where a student here or had some office supporting them as "institutional research."

In practice it works more like sulaine says above. Depends who you talk to and if they're interested.
posted by whatzit at 8:44 AM on September 6, 2006