An "Institutional Fact Book" is a common publication of a university’s office of Institutional Research & Planning.  Usually it is compiled, printed, and distributed annually to key personnel and is limited in contents to tables displaying key attributes of an institution’s operations.  Sometimes it is distributed also as a public relations piece.   Most fact book data, typically, are drawn from dynamic official institutional data bases like the student records (custodian: Registrar), personnel records (custodian: Human Resources), financial records (custodian: Budget Office), admissions records (custodian: Admissions Office), financial aids records (custodian: Financial Aids Office), etc.   Other data may be drawn from periodic surveys of key stakeholders using either locally developed or commercially available survey instruments.

Basic university records from which fact books are developed are dynamic operating files maintained by staff  in many specialized campus offices.  On a typical campus, individuals who maintain and update these files use them for individual transactions only and rarely aggregate, synthesize, or analyze the contents.  Thus, errors may creep into data and not be discovered until subsequent analytical work or research eventually is developed and reveals them.  (Consequently, in working with this electronic fact book, if you discover what appear to be errors, please consult with the Institutional Research and Planning Office so that we may verify data as well as determine the nature and source of any error and possibly assist in preventing recurring errors.  Repeatedly, studies have found that unverified data sets often contain as much as 10% random error resulting from input mistakes.  Far more important for research purposes, however, is systematic error originating from coding errors.  You are especially urged to contact the Institutional Research Office should you discover any systematic error on this site.)

Often two issues are faced in producing institutional fact books
    1.  Because of the  expense associated with producing, duplicating, distributing, and storing, traditional fact books usually present information only at the aggregate institutional level and perhaps also at the level of major institutional sub-divisions.  Rarely, do fact books present detailed programmatic data useful for grass-roots level strategic planning.   Our choice at SSU has been to develop a more detailed collection of data useful for the purpose of strategic planning at the individual unit and program level and distribute it economically via the web.
    2. Secondly, when fact books are distributed periodically, they often are misplaced by users before questions arise for which the data might be useful.  (In a busy organization, information arriving before the question is asked is treated as "noise.")  Alternatively, users may retain and use fact books long after the data is updated or revised by subsequent --study so they may be depending on obsolete information.   Our choice at SSU has been to collect the most accurate and latest version of data on a web site (available immediately at the finger tips of interested stakeholders) without distribution costs or time lag. 

We hope this effort to develop a timely web-based strategic planning fact book will satisfactorily mitigate these two issues.

The explicit goal of SSU’s Institutional Research and Planning Office in developing this e-Fact Book is to enable retrieving  useful data as needed at any planning level where the cost for production, distribution, and storage of huge paper publications would be prohibitive.* A corollary is that we also will be able to update and/or correct the fact book weekly as on-going research develops rather than await periodic publication dates.  Further, in this inexpensive mode, we are able to make available a far greater variety of data and information useful for planning and evaluation.

We hope you enjoy participating in our "experiment" with just-in-time facts and welcome your comments and suggestions as you work with our web site.

Back to the IRP Home Page                                                                       On to the Fact Book