Approved by: President’s Executive Cabinet
History: Issued 11/27/2012, Revised 8/17/2015, 1/21/2016, 1/27/2025
Responsible Official: Office of Institutional Research
Guidelines Statement
Claremont McKenna College (“CMC”) strives to maintain the highest quality institutional data, so that it may accurately and consistently represent itself to both internal and external audiences. This policy regulates how institutional data and related statistics are created, maintained, and audited, and defines the roles of all parties involved in these distinct tasks. These responsibilities are shared amongst departments, Institutional Research, the Office of Strategic Communications & Marketing (OSCM), and the President’s Executive Cabinet.
Entities Covered by this Policy
Contacts
T. Colleen Wynn
Assistant VP for Institutional Research & Assessment
colleen.wynn@cmc.edu
(909) 621-8650
Definitions
Data: Specific figures and calculations CMC reports annually, both internally and externally, including federal and state reporting, as well as for guidebooks and college rankings. Examples of such reports are available on the Institutional Research website.
Survey: An all-encompassing description of the tool used to gather and report data, sometimes referred to as instruments or questionnaires.
General Roles and Responsibilities Related to Data
While no individual CMC office or department “owns” CMC’s data, each department is responsible for the accuracy, quality, and integrity of the data apropos of that office. For example, Admission is accountable for application information; Financial Aid for grant, scholarship, and loan information; Business Office for billing and financial information, etc.
Institutional Research (“IR”) serves as the primary source for accurate, consistent, definition-driven data about Claremont McKenna College. IR provides analysis of data in consultation with various stakeholders, supports internal decision-making, assists with interpreting survey instruments, and maintains compliance with internal and external reporting requirements. IR serves as a resource for best practices in data construction and provides assistance with data-related projects to CMC offices and departments.
IR also serves as the primary contact for surveys seeking data pertaining to multiple departments at CMC (such as IPEDS). For surveys specific to a particular department, the responsible department serves as the primary contact and IR serves as the secondary contact; provided the survey allows for a secondary contact.
The Office of Strategic Communications & Marketing (“OSCM”) is responsible for promoting CMC and responding to media inquiries. OSCM oversees all marketing and communications materials at CMC including the CMC Website, undergraduate and graduate admission marketing materials and brochures, financial aid and career services brochures, the CMC Magazine, Presidential communications, and news releases.
Procedures Related to Constructing, Maintaining, Reporting, and Auditing Data
In order to respond to external requests for data, IR must receive draft survey responses for review two weeks prior to survey submission deadlines. Exceptions from the two-week review period can be requested from the Assistant VP for Institutional Research.
IR must review survey responses, identify and resolve any data discrepancies, and approve surveys for submission. In the unlikely event that IR cannot resolve a data discrepancy with the responsible department, it will refer discrepancies to the Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer (“EVP”). The EVP will assemble the appropriate stakeholders (which must always include the Assistant VP for IR) to discuss the data discrepancy and provide IR with the final data. The EVP and Assistant VP for IR will maintain notes of decisions made regarding data discrepancies.
Departments will maintain written procedures which document how data is constructed, verified, and reported. Departments will share these procedures with IR annually. These written procedures must be reviewed and updated periodically. At a minimum, these procedures must include:
- A documented separation of duties: No single individual may control data construction and the data reporting process. If a department lacks the staff resources to separate the data construction from the independent review (see c below), it must propose an alternate procedure to be approved by the President’s Executive Cabinet.
- Maintaining records: Departments will maintain survey responses, survey instructions, annotated supporting data files, and methodologies for each survey response for at least 5 years to allow auditing by both internal and external reviewers. Offices must share their survey inventory with IR for inclusion in CMC’s master survey inventory.
- Reasonable independent review: A second individual within a department or a colleague in a related office can serve in this capacity.
- Sign-off: The Vice President, or President’s Executive Cabinet representative who oversees the office reporting data must verify that procedures for separation of duties and independent review have been appropriately followed prior to submitting any survey responses. The sign-off may be recorded either on paper or electronically as part of the auditable record of each survey. In the event that an individual is unable to fulfill this responsibility, the Vice President for Business and Chief Financial Officer may perform this function or temporarily delegate it to another responsible staff member.
To help promote consistency across surveys and also over time, IR has primary responsibility for any interpretations of the survey instrument. Any member of President’s Executive Cabinet who oversees an office reporting data may engage IR in a review of IR’s methodology to help minimize data discrepancies during the data construction phase of responding to a survey.
IR makes the most commonly requested data elements available on its website so that those completing surveys, replying to inquiries, or placing institutional data in publications will have easy access to verified data and related definitions.
Basic data that are well-known and publicly available (e.g., CMC was founded in 1946 or CMC is a highly-selective institution) can be reported without following the procedures listed above.
The Office of Strategic Communications and Marketing (OSCM) will maintain written internal procedures to document the fact-checking process for any institutional communication materials prior to printing or publication. In addition to direct fact checking with responsible departments or offices, OCSM will include a separate cross-check with IR when data is included in its materials.
FAQ’s
1. What about list serves and sharing information with other colleagues and professional organizations, which will not be made publicly available?
Before sharing any information that has not been through the formal approval process, it is wise to confirm that the organization or listserv requesting the information has a statement of understanding about data sharing, which should cover appropriate use and limiting third-party access, at a minimum.
2. Who reviews promotional materials for individual departments?
Promotional materials should be reviewed by OSCM before printing and/or publishing. Because OSCM includes a separate cross-check with IR, it is not necessary for departments to send the information to IR separately, but it may expedite the process.
3. Is unofficial data subject to the same procedures set forth in this policy?
Whenever possible, it is best to use reviewed and approved figures for reporting. If that is not an option, it may also work well to use a more general figure, e.g. CMC typically enrolls about 1,300 students. Once a specific number is reported either internally or externally, it can be picked up and spread quickly and also difficult to correct in multiple locations, if it changes, e.g. the number of admitted applicants is around 600 on March 1st but generally increases in May.
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