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• Student and Academic Services Research Group

Student and Academic Services Research Group
Policy Statement and Scope of Activities

At Cornell, our faculty, staff and, particularly, our students are increasingly asked to take part in a variety of research activities. This trend is most pronounced for requests to participate in survey research. In many instances, data are being collected to inform institutional planning and decision-making. However well intentioned these research efforts may be, this greater volume of research activity increases the likelihood of duplication in the types of data being collected and decreases the likelihood that people will agree to participate in a given research project. The Student and Academic Services Research Group was established to consider how to address these concerns.

• Mission
• Scope of Activities
• A) Calendar of Campus Research Activities
• B) Support for Research Activities
• C) Formal Review of Research Proposals
• Submitting a Proposal for Formal Committee Review
• Compliance with Other Institutional Policies
• D) Dissemination of Research Results

Mission

To promote best practices in the design, implementation and use of research conducted within Student and Academic Services by:

• Cataloguing and coordinating research activities
• Offering educative resources and useful links on conducting research
• Increasing awareness and use of existing data
• Providing consultation on research design
• Providing formal review of research proposals
• Promoting the dissemination of research results within the Cornell community

 

Scope of Activities

The intent of this committee is to co-ordinate, support and review the conduct of research within SAS. Any research activity conducted by or within Student and Academic Services will fall under the purview of this committee. We anticipate that studies of Cornell students conducted by SAS professionals will constitute most of this activity, but research involving Cornell faculty and staff as participants is also of interest. External requests to collect data from Cornell constituents that are directed toward an SAS representative should also be brought to the attention of this committee. While we expect that surveys will be the most common research methodology employed, the committee focus will include other data collection methods such as interviews or focus groups.

A) Calendar of Campus Research Activities

In an institution as large and decentralized as Cornell, it is difficult for researchers to be informed of other research activities that have been or soon will be conducted. This lack of information may contribute, quite unintentionally, to the proliferation and duplication of research efforts. To address this issue, the committee will maintain a web-based calendar of surveys and other research activities. The calendar will include SAS research activities of any size – large or small – as well as research projects that originate beyond SAS, when known. The intent of the calendar is to provide a snapshot of the nature, timing and volume of ongoing research. We will encourage researchers to consult this calendar in the early stages of planning their own projects, and to inform the committee of the dates and foci of their own research projects so these can be added to the calendar. Researchers should contact Marne Einarson to have their projects added to this calendar.

B) Support for Research Activities

SAS researchers are encouraged to freely seek guidance from the committee for any research project, large or small. Depending upon the scope of the project and the nature of the advice being sought, researchers may request and receive such guidance very informally – for example, by e-mailing or talking with one or a few committee members. In other instances, the researcher may benefit most from presenting his/her proposed research plan to the committee as a whole. For projects that stand to impose a significant burden on participants, formal review and approval by the committee will be required (see Section C below).
In addition, a number of resources intended to support the conduct of research within SAS will be made available through the committee web site including:

• Guidelines for surveying students
• Steps in conducting student affairs assessment
• Links to other research-related web pages within Cornell, such as the Institutional Review Board for Human Participants, the University Registrar, the Survey Research Institute, and the Office of Institutional Research and Planning
• Links to external resources on conducting research

To take full advantage of the committee’s resources, we encourage researchers to allow ample time – we recommend a minimum of three to four months – to develop and fine tune their research plans. Even more planning time may be needed if the researcher is unsure about the methodology he/she wishes to use or is developing a new instrument.

C) Formal Review of Research Proposals

SAS projects that will use substantial resources of the Cornell community must be formally reviewed by the committee before they can be initiated. At a minimum, this includes research that:

• Draws participants from a major institutional data base, for example, those maintained by the University Registrar, Campus Life, Fraternity and Sorority Affairs, Class Councils and Athletics

Regardless of how potential participants are identified, research that meets the following criteria will also require formal review by the committee:

• Involves more than 100 participants for a quantitative data collection method (e.g., survey research) or 25 participants for a qualitative data collection method (e.g., focus groups or interviews);
• Is broader in scope than program evaluation (e.g., asks about more than just program-based experiences or includes individuals who did not participate in the target program or event); and
• Will require a substantial amount of participants’ time (e.g., protocols that will take more than 10 or 15 minutes to complete, or longitudinal research designs)

Conversely, research projects that are very limited in scope, and research that is conducted exclusively for program evaluation purposes (i.e., research that examines the program-related experiences of students who participate in a specific program or event) will generally be exempt from formal review by the committee.

We appreciate that it may not always be clear at the outset whether a formal review is required or not. Researchers are encouraged to contact the committee several months in advance of the anticipated start date of their research project to discuss whether informal consultation will suffice or formal review will be required.

Submitting a Proposal for Formal Committee Review

The committee will meet on a regular basis (up to six times a year) to formally review research proposals and conduct related business. A schedule of committee meeting dates and research proposal deadlines will be posted on the committee website.

At least six weeks before the anticipated launch date of their research project, researchers will submit a research proposal form (doc) to the committee that includes:

1. Purpose and goals of the study
2. Importance of research to the University
3. Outline of research design
   a) Target population and sampling frame
   b) Data collection method, copies of instrumentation (e.g., survey, interview protocol) and estimated time required to participate
   c) Use of incentives
   d) Data security and protection of confidentiality of personally identifiable information
4. Proposed timing of study (start and end dates of data collection, dates of proposed communications with subjects)
5. Plan for analyzing and distributing results
   

The following criteria will be used by the committee to evaluate research proposals:

1. Importance: Does the research address an important issue at Cornell? Will it provide useful information for academic planning or providing services to Cornell students? Is the research of national importance? Has data recently been collected on this topic?
2. Content and Design: Does the proposed methodology fit the research question(s)? Are the questions well-constructed and easily understood? Is the instrument of reasonable length? Has it been pretested?
3. Population and Sampling Methodology: Who is the target population? Is the sampling methodology appropriate to the research question(s)? Has the same student cohort and/or sample been used in other recent research? Could a smaller sample be drawn to achieve the same objective? Are peer institutions conducting the same research? Are they using the same sampling frame?
4. Timing: Does the proposed timing of the research overlap with or follow closely upon other research directed toward the same population? When were data on this issue last collected at Cornell? Is the data collection period scheduled at a time when students are likely to respond?
5. Data Management and Dissemination: Who will have access to the data? What are the provisions for secure storage of the data? Can data from this research be linked to other data sets? Will personally identifiable information be handled differently than non-identifiable information? Will peer data be available? What is the plan for analyzing the data and disseminating the results? How will research results contribute to better decision making?
6. Resources: What resources will be required to conduct this research (e.g., instrument design, Web application development, mail and/or e-mail services, data entry and analysis)? From where will these resources be obtained?
7. Overall Impact: What will be the impact of the study? Are there any conceivable negative impacts on the University? Will the study overburden respondents? Overall, do the expected benefits of the study appear to outweigh the costs?

Based on their evaluation of the research proposal, the committee may decide to:

• Approve the project as submitted
• Approve the project with recommendations for changes that must be adopted before the project can be initiated
• Require revisions and re-submission of the project before approval is granted
• Reject the project (e.g., the potential benefits of the data do not justify the costs of collection; the research design has weaknesses that cannot be rectified)

SAS researchers will be expected to submit their project for committee review in a timely manner. Repeated failure to obtain formal review and approval for research projects from the committee will result in loss of data privileges.

Compliance with Other Institutional Policies

If research results will not be used exclusively for internal purposes (e.g., they will be presented or published beyond Cornell; or used for an undergraduate honors thesis, master’s thesis or doctoral dissertation), researchers may also be required to obtain approval from Cornell’s Institutional Review Board for Human Participants (IRB). IRB approval should be sought after the proposal has been reviewed by the SAS Research Group. The committee should subsequently be informed of the decision of the IRB.

We note here that new analyses of existing data may also fall within the IRB's definition of "research". This document summarizes the research scenarios involving existing data that typically require IRB review.

SAS researchers are also expected to be familiar and in compliance with relevant University policies such as those concerning electronic mail use (Policy 5.2 Mass Electronic Mailing; Policy 5.5 Stewardship and Custodianship of Electronic Mail) and data security (Policy 4.5 Access to Student Information; Policy 4.12 Data Stewardship and Custodianship).

D) Dissemination of Research Results

The committee will provide opportunities for researchers to share the results of their projects with colleagues. This may take the form of presentations which can be scheduled as part of the committee meeting time or in a separate venue such as a “brown bag” lunch session. Survey instruments and summaries of research results may also be posted on the committee website.