Cornwallis Road ■ P.O. Box ■ Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, USA We Love Your Data! A Report from the IPEDS Help Desk Jamie Isaac & Janice Kelly-Reid RTI International April 16, 2008 Presented at the 2008 SHEEO/NCES Network Conference and IPEDS Workshop Arlington, VA

2 IPEDS Help Desk - Operated since July 2000 by RTI International - Help Desk agents are specially hired and trained to serve IPEDS customers - Open weekdays 8:30am to 5:00pm Eastern time - Open evenings and weekends during the final ten days of each collection

3 What is the Role of the Help Desk? Typically, we have staff, many of them seasoned veterans. We operate out of our Call Center in north Raleigh, NC. Respond to phone calls and s. Make prompting (reminder) calls during the last 2 weeks of each collection. Review and migrate all survey data after locked and complete. At minimum, this means careful review of the edit reports and caveats. We can enter “special notes” for individual schools, so let us know if special treatment is needed for a particular reason.

4 Meet the Help Desk

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6 Help Desk Activity – Collection Year *Through April 9, 2008

7 Inbound Call volume Collection Year *Through April 9, 2008 Projected

8 Outbound Call volume Collection Year *Through April 9, 2008 Projected

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10 Targeting Help Desk Resources  During the past year, we’ve been gathering some data to help us better understand who the Help Desk users are, how many keyholders are new to IPEDS, and which institutions require the most reminder calls.  Additional training resources targeted to new keyholders.  Future plans are to conduct reminder calls targeted to new users (and historically late respondents).

11 Keyholder Turnover, No Change in Keyholder New Keyholder (New School) New Keyholder (Existing School)

12 Inbound Help Desk Calls, by Sector

13 Outbound (Primarily Reminder) Calls, by Sector

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15 Last Minute Submissions Everyone submitted their data really early this year! Just kidding… During the final week of each collection, there continues to be an extremely heavy burden on the collection system.

16 Last Week Submissions

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18 What is the Role of the Data Tools Help Desk? Opened on March 5, Currently, 2-3 staff working as needed, responding to phone calls and s. Assists IPEDS users and others by familiarizing them with the IPEDS data tools and/or assisting with outputting data files. Includes the following tools & resources: Peer Analysis System (PAS) Executive Peer Tool (ExPT) College Navigator Data Analysis System (DAS) Other NCES data sources and publications

19 Data Tools Help Desk 3/5/07 – 4/12/ inquiries per week, on average Source of inquiries: Phone- 66% s- 34% Average call duration: 11.5 minutes For calls needing additional research, average time spent per request: 26 minutes

20 Data Tools Help Desk 3/5/07 – 4/12/07 Inquiries by Data Tool

21 Examples of the kinds of help we have provided recently  Didn’t understand why there are different levels to log-in; needed help with basic navigation.  Needed help understanding how to use qualifying variables.  Wanted to know how to generate calculated variables across multiple institutions (in order to determine grad rate averages by sector).  Didn’t understand how to create a comparison group by variable.  Wanted to create a list of institutions with a similar allied health program, with enrollment totals over past several years.  Needed help calculating ratios for sub-groups of faculty compared to all faculty.  What questions can we help YOU with?

22 In Closing… Thank you for your assistance in making IPEDS successful! As usual, we have a gift of appreciation… which will help you remember how to contact us! …and finally….