Moving the Needle on College Student Basic Needs: National Community College Provost Perspectives, United States, 2020 (ICPSR 38833)

Version Date: Jul 25, 2023

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Principal Investigator(s):
Melissa Blankstein, Ithaka S+R; Christine Wolff-Eisenberg, Achieving the Dream

Series:

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR38833.v1

Version V1

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Summary

Through the Holistic Measures of Student Success (HMSS) project, funded by the Educational Credit Management Corporation (ECMC) Foundation as part of their Basic Needs Initiative cohort, the researchers unpacked and explored how student success has traditionally been defined and measured within the community college sector and what new metrics and data collection processes can be developed to more holistically reflect the community college student experience. Therefore, this project aimed to (1) establish a shared understanding of current institutional practices in defining student success, and (2) measure the sector's openness to new approaches, especially those focused on students' basic needs.

To shed light on the challenges and opportunities associated with the collection and prioritization of a broader set of student success metrics, especially those focused on a more holistic set of student experiences and challenges like food and housing security, the research team surveyed community college provosts across the United States in fall 2020. The survey examined national provost perspectives on college priorities and influencing factors, traditional data collection practices, emerging data collection processes on student basic needs, and the role of data disaggregation for advancing equity.

Citation

Blankstein, Melissa, and Wolff-Eisenberg, Christine. Moving the Needle on College Student Basic Needs: National Community College Provost Perspectives, United States, 2020. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2023-07-25. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR38833.v1

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Funding

Educational Credit Management Corporation Foundation

Subject Terms

Geographic Coverage

Distributor(s)

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
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Time Period(s)

2020

Date of Collection

2020-09-08 -- 2020-12-02

Data Collection Notes

  1. Questionnaire: Coded values are in parentheses (i.e. "(10)"). For matrix and multi-select questions, the variable names are below each item/statement in parentheses (i.e. "(Q3_1)").

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Study Purpose

The aim of this study was to (1) establish a shared understanding of current institutional practices in defining student success, and (2) measure the sector's openness to new approaches, especially those focused on students' basic needs. This study's purpose also is to provide the higher education community with insights on how data regarding holistic student needs, in particular, basic needs like food and housing security, have been collected and prioritized across the country.

Study Design

This study was conducted as a survey between October and December of 2020. The population for this survey included provosts, chief academic officers (CAO), vice presidents of academic affairs (VPAA), and those in equivalent positions at not-for-profit, two-year colleges and associate's dominant four-year institutions across the United States. These individuals were surveyed because of their role in shaping and bolstering positive student outcomes at their college and their responsibility in overseeing data collection processes and the departments that determine institutional and student success.

Sample

Contact information for the survey sample was gathered by the research team through an iterative process, involving creating a list of applicable colleges and combing through institutional websites for the official in the most senior role within their academic affairs department or equivalent. Overall, 70 percent of the sample indicated their title at their institution aligned with provost, chief academic officers (CAO), vice presidents of academic affairs (VPAA), or equivalent, 17 percent were vice presidents of both academic and student affairs, and three percent were the presidents of their college.

Time Method

Cross-sectional

Universe

Chief academic and student affairs officers at community colleges across the United States.

Unit(s) of Observation

Individual

Data Type(s)

Mode of Data Collection

Response Rates

The sample for the survey included 1,080 community college provosts, with 128 completing the survey for a response rate of 12 percent.

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Original Release Date

2023-07-25

Version History

2023-07-25 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

  • Created variable labels and/or value labels.
  • Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

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Notes