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Parents of the high school class of 2000 students who attended their local community college in fall 2000 responded to a mailed survey and participated in a focus group discussion. The study examined parents' expectations from the college, role in their sons' or daughers' college choice, and observations following their children's first year. Survey findings revealed parents had high academic goals for their children but overestimated academic abilities; they engaged in a variety of college search and choice activities. Focus group research enriched survey findings: Parents expected substantial communication directly from the college about their children's course choices and academic progress. Implications for practice and the value of using multiple research approaches are discussed.

There is a growing body of literature about assessment in higher education. Much of it is devoted to advocating the benefits of assessment, describing how assessment initiatives and programs might be organized within an institution, identifying key attributes of successful assessment projects (leadership, resources, faculty engagement), and explaining numerous assessment approaches and measures. Fewer publications present actual assessment results or detail how these results were used by a department or institution. This chapter has another purpose: identifying key ways in which institutional research offices furnish leadership or assistance in assessment.

Measuring and reporting competencies requires new and innovative processes. At the same time, the fundamentals of measurement, such as validity and reliability, feasibility of data collection and maintenance, and effective ways to analyze and report results, must be built into any new approach to documenting student learning in useful ways. The data implications of competency-based educational programs are important both for evaluating programs and for conveying meaningful information about students' performances. It is important for educators to grapple with these implications when they first begin to consider planning and implementing competencybased programs. Embarking on this path creates new and unusual data and reporting demands. These demands will not integrate well with traditional systems for recording and reporting student learning outcomes.This chapter reviews the types of data issues that will be encountered by institutions offering competency-based learning models. It also offers some examples of how colleges have addressed these issues. Before turning to this discussion, however, a basic definition of competency-based educational programs is necessary. Throughout this volume, a competency is defined as "a combination of skills, abilities, and knowledge needed to perform a specific task" (U.S. Department of Education, 2001, p. 1). Competency-based learning models bundle competencies in ways that require students to demonstrate performance in a setting that more or less simulates the real-world context in which the competency would be applicable. Competency statements seek to reduce measurement to definable units that contain sufficient granularity as to be unequivocal. The definition of a competency statement as presented later in this volume by Alice Bedard Voorhees provides students and faculty NEW DIRECTIONS FOR INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH, no. 110, Summer 2001

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