Coping Skills For Surviving Institutional Research



Survival Skills for Institutional Research

By

Ronnie Chrestman

Nancy James

Jessica Swink

Clemson University

Abstract

Obtaining a new job can produce feelings of anxiety, but what seems to matter most is our perception and interpretation of the stressors. Institutional Research newcomers face multiple demands with tight deadlines, in a career most find by accident. This session will be a presentation of practical strategies to help Institutional Research newcomers adapt to their surroundings and learn some coping skills that have proven helpful to others in this profession. Attendees will enhance their conference experience as they begin developing a professional network in this session.

Newcomer’s Session: Survival Skills For Institutional Research

Obtaining a new job is usually a cause for celebration, but even the best career move can produce feelings of stress and anxiety. In a short period of time, you are faced with a number of different challenges. It is important to know that everyone is exposed to stressful situations. Stress is an integral element in the lives of all creatures, and it plays an important role in survival.

There is good stress and bad stress. Good stress helps keep us alert, motivates us to face challenges, and drives us to solve problems. Good stress increases our strength, speed and reaction time. Bad stress, or distress, occurs when our bodies overreact to events. Such reactions may have been useful in times long ago when our ancestors were frequently faced with life or death matters. Nowadays, however, such occurrences are not common, yet we react to many daily situations as if they were life or death issues. Our bodies really don't know the difference between a saber-toothed tiger and a supervisor correcting our work. As survivors in the field of Institutional Research, we would like to provide newcomers to this career with some of the insights and coping methods we have developed to manage the stress related to this line of work.

There are several things we will address during this session. We would like to share our perspectives on some of the problems and responsibilities that new employees in IR may experience. However, we also want to offer encouragement and portray the triumphs that we have felt by remaining persistent and committed to this profession. We sympathize that there are “a million and one” ways to define faculty. We have felt the elation of discovering new methods to report data. We have dealt with the realization that what are considered standard reports actually change from year to year. We have learned to fear the words “I have an opportunity for you”. And, we’ve experienced the luxury of finding the requested information on a web site.

This session offers tips and shortcuts for surviving the newcomer phase. We will focus on issues such as networking, documentation, confidentiality, resources, and strategies for dealing with challenges.

The IR Team

Every person brings assets to his office, and over time, each develops a niche. One of the first steps in learning the ropes in IR is identifying the abilities of other team members in your office. Each team member has strengths and will share their knowledge of data collection and reporting. It is also important that you are realistic and know your own strengths and weaknesses. Be able to accept your limits and ask for help when necessary.

In a multi-analyst office, specialization can move the team toward greater efficiency. Oftentimes a person is hired to oversee or maintain a certain type of data or develop an expertise in one area. A researcher who works with one area (e.g. employees, students, facilities, finance, etc.) has the opportunity to dig deep into that area and make the most use of it. However, over time, a person must also develop competency in many areas. A level of expertise is great, but if only one person in the office can extract data from the human resource database and a bus hits that person, then the whole office is ill equipped to deal with that type of request. (Hopefully, this is an extreme case!) Cross training in others’ areas of specialization will create a balance of breadth and depth of knowledge in the department.

Communication is very important when discussing projects with your supervisors and colleagues. Ask questions to make sure you understand your research questions. Repeat data requests back to make sure you know what your supervisor, colleagues, and external requestors are really asking. Use your co-workers as resources, but don’t expect them to design everything for you. Find out if your supervisor expects to review your work or have all reports sent through his or her office. It is likely that your department head is frequently out of the office in meetings. Take advantage of times he or she is in the office to work out questions and project details.

Any contribution that you can make towards office communication and harmony will increase efficiency and reputation. It is important to know each person’s role, ascertain that your goals are synonymous, and that you make a concerted effort to work together to plan for unusual circumstances and times of high volume workloads.

Workload

A major adjustment to the field of IR is learning to cope with the workload. Some projects are short requests that might only take a few minutes. Other projects might take months. And the complicated part is that you will have several different types of projects on your “to do” list at one time. Many people feel better adjusted to this profession once they realize and accept the fact that there is no such thing as being “caught up”. There is always some project or request or survey waiting to be done!

To maintain your sanity, you have to prioritize tasks and manage your time effectively. Take time out at the beginning or end of the day to schedule your work. It will save you time and prevent stress in the long run. Write down the activities that you plan to do and cross off items as you complete them. Analyze your work patterns and determine what time of day you are most productive. Plan your schedule accordingly. Schedule large-scale, annual, or critical projects when you are going to be most alert and productive. Plan and collaborate with others in your office to even out workloads.

Expect interruptions to your schedule. There will always be times when an administrator needs information immediately, and you will be expected to stop what you are doing and provide data. It is also important to know your due dates. Set a deadline to finish a project before the actual due date to allow for time to proofread the project and make revisions. As impossible as it may seem, try to minimize interruptions when faced with a deadline or overwhelming project.

Learn to be innovative. While you are still learning, you may have to simply replicate the work of others. As you progress, using technological advances to increase productivity will allow you to add to the intellectual growth of the field of IR and free yourself and others to handle the ever increasing workload. Creating innovative solutions may seem to make a project take longer at first, but they make recurring projects much more efficient and often more accurate in the long run. Taking time out of your busy schedule to learn SAS, SPSS, MS Access, Visual Basic programming, and many other tools will help you make your time more productive.

Finding Answers

“I don’t know” by itself is not a good answer. However, “I don’t know, but I will check and get back with you” is acceptable. Nobody knows all of the answers, but everybody can search for the answer. Be persistent! With the wealth of information available to IR professionals, it is rare that an answer cannot be found, calculated, or researched. Talk to people in your office, your institution and other IR offices for help locating information sources. If faced with what seems an insurmountable task, attack the problem from a different perspective. If one strategy doesn’t work, try another. Maybe you’re staring at your computer praying for divine intervention—which may come eventually—but you could try mapping out your project on paper and see if there is a better way to answer the question.

Documentation

As IR professionals, we have data everywhere—data that must become information. And many times, a request that seems straightforward quickly becomes confusing because there can be many idiosyncrasies to the data. Familiarize yourself with any data dictionaries that might be available for the tables that you are using. Keep these notes in a convenient location. If there are not notes already available about the data, be sure to keep notes for yourself and create a useful data dictionary for any new employees that come after you. Keep a notebook handy to document everything so that you don’t have to “re-create the wheel” each time you do a report. Also, develop naming conventions for your data files to prevent confusion when you and other analysts are looking for data. Set up folders on your computer where you complete your work and areas where requests are stored so that you can easily find the queries and reports again if the need arises. Hold on to a copy of reports and surveys for future reference and to help you replicate the same type of data for future reports.

The Learning Curve

We encourage you to give yourself time to learn the ropes. One analyst in our office relates that, when she was hired, she was told that she would probably be making a contribution to the office within a month, but it would probably take at least six months to learn her job. A little later, she was told that in IR you actually have to go through a 1-year cycle in order to see all of the requests that come in and the reports that are done. Then, after her first year, her co-workers told her that it actually takes 2 years to feel comfortable in this position. The first year, they explained, you’re doing everything blindly, but during the second year, things come more naturally and you retain what you’ve learned.

In actuality, there is never a complete feeling of complacency in this occupation. This is not a field in which you become trained quickly, so don’t get discouraged with yourself or your job. And even when you have been employed for a while, there are always new things to learn and new obstacles to overcome. It is extremely frustrating to realize that another more experienced worker can do a project in a matter of minutes that took you all day to complete. View this time as an investment in your future productivity. Taking the time to learn as much as you can in the beginning will save hours, days, or even weeks in the future.

At first, you were understandably overwhelmed by the medley of new languages that you will have to learn. You asked yourself over and over again, “Just what is IPEDS, AAUP, CUPA, etc.?” Acronyms seem to be a way of life in higher education. Be patient and you will soon be speaking the same language as everybody else! Don’t be afraid to ask someone if the terminology is not familiar to you.

You can make the learning process a lot easier by setting challenging goals for yourself. Work with a mentor to create long-term learning goals that will help you focus on the techniques you want to be able to use. Then, break those goals into short-term, specific goals to help you achieve your learning objectives.

As you work through the data and become more familiar with it, your expertise increases. Education and background can be helpful, but a successful career in IR develops with time, experience, and a willingness to learn. Each request that you complete helps to increase the perception of ability and lowers your feelings of uncertainty and stress.

Data Accuracy

Data must be accurate. IR offices need to have a reputation based on information integrity. In this business, reputation means everything. It is imperative that you check your data for errors. Authentic, reliable, credible information will help you and your department to develop a reputation of competence and objectivity within your institution and with external researchers. Institutional leaders depend on accurate information to both improve and market the institution. One transposed number can cause readers wary of IR offices to question the accuracy of the full report.

It is easy to lose perspective when looking at the same data over an extended period of time. Even senior research analysts should have someone else review reports before they are released. Attached to this paper, you will find a list of proofreading and editing strategies that should prove helpful. When proofing reports containing summarized data, take the time to look at the raw data to make sure your queries, calculations, and summarizations produced logical results. Develop techniques to compare report totals to previously reported data. This will ensure reporting consistency. We also advise re-evaluating the operational definitions used to create data on an on-going basis. This will help you to portray the most accurate picture of the institution in relation to frequently changing research questions.

Confidentiality

Institutional researchers generally have access to more data than anyone else on campus. Thus, we need to exert extra caution when asked for information. Before releasing data, analysts should consider whether or not the information is considered confidential. Just because we have access to the data does not mean that it is acceptable to share it with other people. Even data that is considered public information may need to be approved by the institution’s public relations office.

Research the freedom of information laws and policies that affect your institution. These are probably most relevant to salaries, benefits, and personal demographic data. Try to use aggregate data and omit data that can be linked back to individuals wherever possible. Ask someone more experienced when in doubt.

Networking: Sources of Questions and Answers

One way to ease your transition into this career is by making a point of familiarizing yourself with your office and your institution. Although it is time consuming, it will help you in the long run to know where your requests are coming from, the best sources of information, who to call if you have a question, and what data is already readily available. Introducing yourself to key people at your institution and striving to develop a favorable relationship with them will be mutually advantageous. It is helpful to be in contact with people in human resources, accounting, student records, admissions, financial aid, and the various academic departments. Decision-makers are good contacts in these departments, but knowing those in direct contact with the data is usually just as important.

Institutional Research provides many opportunities to personal knowledge outside of the office. Through seminars, professional meetings, and workshops, we have many opportunities to learn. Remember, any question asked to increase one’s knowledge is not a “stupid” question. Sometimes we wonder whom we can ask. Some IR offices are not very large, containing only one or two people. You need a network of IR colleagues to garner information from. Often, when we identify a source of information or a procedure that is beneficial to us, we get really excited and want to share our momentous find with a co-worker. Nine times out of ten our bubble is quickly burst when we realize that every one in the office has already made our earthshaking discovery. However, our counterparts at other institutions may not have the same resources that we do and might profit from this discovery. In today’s world, a colleague isn’t just the guy in the next office. A colleague is the guy in the next county, in the next state. Our colleagues are just an e-mail away. By developing a network of IR newcomers, we can share the excitement of IR, and develop long-term friendships. Through sharing questions, experiences, or just ideas, we can help each other. Probably the best recommendation that we can make to new IR professionals is to utilize AIR and its regional and state organizations to foster these relationships.

Enjoying Your Job

It is very easy to get bogged down by the intensity surrounding this job. Guard yourself against stress by allowing some humor into your life. Laugh! It causes relaxation! Researchers say that real belly laughter can relax the muscles more than a vigorous massage. Find things like cartoons or jokes that provide enjoyment and make you laugh. Be playful—get a yo-yo or a Slinky for your office! Sometimes, a well-deserved play break can help you to re-focus, put things in perspective, and finish that project that seems impossible. You could also try going for a short walk or finding somewhere quiet to be alone and relax for a few minutes.

Don’t be overwhelmed by your new environment. This job may take a long time to learn, but it does get easier over time. You will find yourself digging through data dictionaries and program manuals less and less as you become familiar with the data and the research techniques. You’ll learn to develop innovative solutions that will make your life easier and others will soon be coming to you for advice.

Remember that the one person in control of your stress level is you. While you can’t always control the stressors in your environment, you can decide how you are going to react to them and develop strategies for decreasing their impact. We hope this gets you started in developing those strategies in your new IR job.

Proofreading and Editing Strategies

❑ Read your document aloud because it encourages you to read every word. Read slowly.

❑ Read it backwards to focus on the spelling of words.

❑ Use spell check and grammar check as a first screening, but don’t depend on them.

❑ Don’t proofread for every type of mistake at once – do one proof for spelling, another for missing/additional spaces, one for format, etc.

❑ Give a copy of the document to another person to look over. Try reading it aloud to each other. For numbers and codes that have been keyed, have one person read from the original, while the other checks the final version.

❑ Use a ruler to check one line at a time.

❑ Point with your finger to read one word at a time.

❑ Read down the columns in a table checking for errors. Then, read across the table.

❑ Be especially careful to check for errors in such areas as the page heading/footer, date, title, and column headings. Many errors occur because people skim over these areas.

❑ Double check little words such as “or”, “of”, “it”, “is”, etc. because they are often interchanged.

❑ When checking grammar, pay special attention to capitalization of proper names. Also, ascertain that you have the proper title for any individuals in the report.

❑ When proofing reports containing summarized data, take the time to look at the raw data to make sure your queries, calculations and summarizations produced logical results.

Resources

Web sites:

Association of Institutional Research

Regional and State Associations of IR

Internet Resources for IR

IR Code of Ethics

Books:

Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey

The One Minute Manager by Kenneth H. Blanchard and Spencer Johnson

Surviving Job Stress by John B. Arden

Naked at Work (and Other Fears): How to Stay Sane when Your Job Drives You Crazy by Paul Hellman

The Primer for Institutional Research edited by William E. Knight

Funnies!

Always give 100% at work: 12% Monday, 23% Tuesday, 40% Wednesday, 20% Thursday and 5% on Friday.

Senility Prayer: God grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, the good fortune to run into the ones that I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference.

Picture yourself near a stream,

Birds are chirping in the crisp, cool mountain air.

Nothing can bother you here.

No one knows this secret place.

You are in total seclusion from that place called the world.

The soothing sound of a waterfall fills the air with a cascade of serenity.

The water is so clear that you can easily make out the face of the person whose head you are holding under the water… there now, feel better?!

A man flying in a hot air balloon realizes that he is lost. He reduces his altitude and spots a man in a field down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts, “Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?” The man below says, “Yes, you’re in a hot air balloon about 30 feet above this field.” “You must be an engineer,” says the balloonist. “I am. How did you know?” “Well, everything that you told me is technically correct, but it’s of no use to anyone.” The man below says, “You must be in management.” “I am, but how did you know?” “You don’t know where you are or where you are going, but you expect me to be able to help. You are in the same position that you were in before we met, but now it’s my fault!”

A little girl had just finished her first week of school. “I’m wasting my time,” she complained to her mother. “I can’t read, I can’t write – and they won’t let me talk!”

A wise schoolteacher sends this note to all parents on the first day of school: “If you promise not to believe everything your child says happens at school, I promise not to believe everything he says happens at home.”

Several weeks after a young man had been hired, he was called into the personnel director's office. "What is the meaning of this?" the director asked. "When you applied for this job, you told us you had five years experience. Now we discover this is the first job you've ever held." "Well," the young man replied, "in your advertisement you said you wanted somebody with imagination."

The new employee stood before the paper shredder looking confused.

"Need some help?" a secretary asked.

"Yes," he replied. "How does this thing work?"

"Simple," she said, taking the fat report from his hand and feeding it into the shredder.

"Thanks, but where do the copies come out?"

Inspirational Thoughts

Nothing can stop the individual with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the individual with the wrong mental attitude.

~~ Thomas Jefferson

For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin – real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way. Something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then, life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.

~~ Alfred D’Souza

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

~~ George Bernard Shaw

You’ve failed many times, although you don’t remember. You fell down the first time you tried to walk. You almost drowned the first time you tried to swim. Don’t worry about failure… Worry about the chances you miss when you don’t even try.

~~ Sherman Finesilver, US District Court Judge

Progress always involves risk; you can’t steal second base and keep your foot on first.

~~ Frederick Wilcox

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “Press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

~~ Calvin Coolidge

The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.

~~ Helen Keller

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

~~ Theodore Roosevelt

Obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.

~~ Michael Jordan

I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure, which is, try to please everybody.

~~ Herbert Bayard Swope

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