The IRE Office offers faculty, administrators, and university-wide committees at Emory professional services in the area of institutional and program effectiveness designed to make a research project successful, efficient, and methodologically sound. Our services include a variety of research and project consulting services, online research and survey design, and data analysis and reporting. These services can be one-to-one consultation or statistical support to a group or committee.
Ad Hoc Requests for Information
IRE staff will respond to ad hoc requests for information from Emory's administrators, faculty, and peers.
Project Consulting and Research Design
Not sure what information to collect, how to collect it, and when? IRE can convert your research goals into a completely managed project, from design to reporting; or, we can help at any stage of your research project. Additionally, we can help select the correct sampling method.
Questionnaire Design
Our assistance with questionnaire design can be as simple as suggesting wording on a single question, or as comprehensive as developing an entirely new questionnaire. We can also translate existing mail surveys to Web-based questionnaires.
Survey Administration
We can administer scannable paper surveys, Web surveys, or a combination of the two methods. Most survey projects undertaken in the IRE Office are conducted via the Web, and there are no costs associated with postage or data entry. In the case of mail surveys, however, an administrative fee will be assessed to cover the entire administration process, including printing, stuffing, mailing, and collecting completed responses.
Developing a Peer Group
IRE can help academic programs and administrative departments determine the most appropriate peer group for the situation and purpose of the comparison. Options range from statistical selection methods (cluster and discriminant analysis) to those that depend entirely on judgment.
Data Analysis and Reporting
We can conduct statistical analysis of data collected in surveys, starting with simple descriptive statistics and going to complex multivariate methods required in scholarly research. The analysis is reported in summary and detailed reports, using high-quality graphics and tables.
Not sure how to apply survey findings to decision making? We can help develop action plans for using the results.
Focus Groups
IRE has expertise in conducting focus groups, both as a primary data collection mechanism and as a follow-up to a survey. Services include the moderation of focus groups meetings, compilation of qualitative data collected in focus groups, use of the data in the production of questionnaires for surveys, and the use of focus group data in providing recommendations and assessment.
In-person Interviews
For selected projects, IRE can offer in-person interviewing. If the project requires tape-recorded interviews, a fee will be assessed to cover the cost of tapes and transcripts.
