Research & Standardized Testing
The Counseling Center facilitiates some of the major institutional research & standardized testing on campus, including data collection on first-year students, and data collection on seniors and recent graduates to determine personal and educational experiences, and career plans. Below are detailed descriptions of the freshman and senior surveys administered to Holy Cross students.
CIRP Freshman Survey: Program Overview
The Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) is a national longitudinal study of the American higher education system. Established in 1966 at the American Council on Education, the CIRP is now administered by the Higher Education Research Institute. The CIRP is the nation's largest and oldest empirical study of higher education, involving data on some 1,800 institutions and over 11 million students. It is regarded as the most comprehensive source of information on college students. Participating institutions receive a detailed profile of their entering freshman class, as well as national normative data for students in similar types of institutions (e.g., public four-year colleges, moderately selective Protestant colleges, highly selective Catholic colleges, public two-year colleges). These campus profile reports, together with the national normative profile, provide important data that are useful in a variety of program and policy areas:
- Admissions and recruitment
- Academic program development and review
- Institutional self-study and accreditation activities
- Public relations and development
- Institutional research and assessment
- Retention studies
- Longitudinal research about the impacts of campus policies and programs
Although the normative data provided with the institutional reports (and published annually in The American Freshman) are based on the population of first-time, full-time freshmen, participating institutions also receive separate reports for their part-time and transfer students. Additionally, participating campuses can obtain supplemental reports profiling students by various subgroups (for example, by intended major or career, by academic ability, by home state).
CIRP Freshman Survey: Student Information Form
The types of questions that can be found in the freshman survey pertain to:
- Gender, age, place of birth, family, race, religious affiliation, etc.
- High school name and location, along with average grade
- Intended major and intentions after college
- Expected source of educational expenses, financing college
- Activities participated in during the past year (inside and outside of the classroom)
- The decision to attend college
- Political views
- Personality traits and abilities (skills)
- Opinions on political, educational, and personal issues
- Time spent in a typical high school week doing certain activities
- Reasons for attending this particular institution
- Importance of completing specific goals
College Senior Survey
Developed by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI), the College Senior Survey (CSS) is administered through the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP), which has conducted national surveys of college students and faculty since 1966. When used in conjunction with the CIRP Freshman Survey, the CSS generated valuable longitudinal data on students' cognitive and affective growth during college as well as their post-college plans. The CSS has been used by institutional researchers to study the impact of service-learning, leadership development, and faculty mentoring, and to assess a wide variety of instructional practices.
The redesigned College Senior Survey (CSS), formerly the College Student Survey, helps institutions respond to the need for assessment and accountability data by providing information on a broad range of student outcomes. The new name highlights the updated design and focus for this instrument as an "exit" or "senior" survey. The new CSS continues to offer valuable feedback on students' academic and campus life experiences-information that can be used for student assessment activities, accreditation and self-study reports, campus planning, and policy analysis. It also offers new feedback on students' post-college plans immediately following graduation.