Accessing and Using the Accessing and Using the Delaware Secure Server to Delaware Secure Server to Develop Customized Peer Develop Customized Peer

Analysis at Your Analysis at Your InstitutionInstitution

Karen DeMonte and Allison WaltersUniversity of Delaware

Data needed: • Teaching load data (student credit hours

and number of sections taught) for a fall term by faculty category.

• Academic year student credit hours taught, fiscal year instructional expenditures and research and public service expenditure.

• For non-participants, instructions for completing the survey is available on-line at www.udel.edu/ir/cost

Survey Instrument Part A:

Survey Instrument Part B:

Entering your institution’s user

name and password takes

you to the secure Cost site.

Peer analysis:Options Available

Using national norms

OR

Customized peer analysis

NATIONAL NORMS

The 'norms' reported are the refined means that were calculated for each indicator variable in the tables – available to ALL participants…

Faculty workload and unit costs are provided in the following reports that are available to download as EXCEL files from the secured web site:

• Norms by institutions’ Carnegie Classification• Norms by the highest degree offered in the

discipline• Norms by the undergraduate/graduate program mix

CUSTOMIZED PEER ANALYSIS

Users’ need for analysis goes beyond the standard norms…

• Select a subset of institutions within a Carnegie class. Users can also limit peers according to a finer breakdown of Carnegie class, e.g., Research High Activity or Research Very High vs. the standard Research combined classification.

• Select institutions that cut across Carnegie classifications in order to parallel the institution’s existing primary peer groups with regards to other institutional characteristics.

AND…

• Select a constant set of peers that reflects the majority of the institution’s programs.

• Select institutions at the discipline level. This results in having a different set of peers for each discipline or reasonable discipline groupings, e.g. humanities, social sciences, physical science.

Three Ways of Conducting a Customized Peer Analysis:

1. Download EXCEL files of refined norms and institutional ratios previously requested from the University of Delaware.

2. User produced customized peer data sets to download into EXCEL and import into SPSS or SAS to calculate non-refined means.

3. Purchase Excel Macro to calculate refined means.

UD Requested Peer Analysis

Download EXCEL files of norms and peer ratio data:

Participants have the opportunity to request up to 5 peer analyses at no cost* from the University of Delaware. Results are posted within 2 weeks in the secured site and they include:

1. Table of norms (refined means) in formats that are similar to those of the standard peer norms

2. Peer ratio data given in EXCEL files which include the data points from which the norms are calculated

* $250 for each additional analysis

Select ‘Peer Analysis’…

…and then click to view the peer

group.

…select the table or ratio …

…and download the file into

EXCEL.

User Produced Peer Analysis

User produces customized Peer Ratio Data Sets from the Secured Site:

• It allows users to do an unlimited number of peer analyses

• Used by participants who feel the need to choose different sets of peers at the discipline level

• Data are given in EXCEL files and are designed to be easily read by the user’s SPSS or SAS programs to calculate refined means

• Download as often and as many as you want at no charge

Select ‘Peer Ratio Data’…

Highlight your peer institutions and submit the

request.

Select the ratio table to view or

download…

And view your results.

Music Department requests a peer

analysis…but which schools to include?

Find institutions that reported data

for a particular discipline.

Select by discipline or

CIP...

…and review the list of institutions that submitted data.

Music Department Peers

1. Department Chair selects peers using listing for CIP 50.09 – Music

2. Download data into Excel spreadsheet3. Run simple SPSS syntax to…

• select music CIP codes • calculate simple mean for FTE student per

FTE faculty by faculty type for peers and UD

4. Create charts of UD data and Peer data

Again, highlight your peer

institutions and submit the request.

Begin downloading the

ratio tables.

Refer to the Column Definitions for help on deciphering your data.

Refer to Column Definitions of ratio

tables.

Work with your data in Excel or…

Import it into SPSS.

Hint: Before importing your Excel data, change the sheet name and the

column headings.

SPSS Data File

SPSS Output File of unrefined means

Excel Chart based on SPSS output

***************************** Macro to Calculate Refined Means

*****************************Users calculate unlimited peer analyses with refined means

* one-time fee of $250

Macro to Calculate Refined Means:

• Refined mean is the average of the data points after eliminating the outliers.

• Use in conjunction with the data that you downloaded from the "peer ratio data".

• The macro calculates for each CIP…• simple mean• number of observations used in the calculation• standard deviation• refined mean

Sample Output:

Accessing and Using the Delaware Secure Server to Develop Customized Peer Analysis at Your Institution

Karen DeMonte kdemonte@udel.eduAllison Walters awalters@udel.edu

Office of Institutional Research and Planning University of Delaware325 Hullihen HallNewark, DE  19716-0172Phone:  (302)831-2021