Hi Katya

At Brighton impact assessment is carried out by the Department that
holds central responsibility for the policy (as opposed to those
responsible for implementing it), following training and with support
from the Staff and/or Student Equality and Diversity Adviser.  The lead
assessor for the Assessment Policy is the Senior Assistant Registrar
(Recruitment and Admissions). 

I have just received a first draft IA of our Admissions Policy.  The
data used for this was applications data held on the university
admissions database.  This predominantly relates to undergraduate & PGCE
applications only, but does also include some postgrad applications
info.  With the help of a statistician the assessor has looked at
applications to offers (conditional & unconditional) by gender, age,
disability and ethnicity. The statistician carried out a chi square test
of association on the faculty data to identify whether or not there was
an association between offer rates and demographic characteristic.
Consideration was also given to looking at who has applied to study at
the university, but it was decided that this was more relevant to the
Widening Participation Policy than the Admissions Policy.

As far as I'm aware the raw data wasn't difficult to get hold of (I deal
with staff data only, but I gather that our student data system is
fairly good).   However, there is the issue that no info was available
on most postgraduate applications meaning that there's a potential gap
in the draft IA.  

The IA has not yet been finalised, but the limits of statistical
analysis are acknowledged within the draft, particularly in relation to
difficulties with small variances and to statistical significance
findings within a large sample. Attention is also drawn to the need to
compare university data with national benchmarks of educational
attainment/HE participation, in order to put any findings into the
national context.

If you would like any further info about this, please contact me
off-list at: [log in to unmask]

Kind regards

Helen

Helen Tatch
Equality and Diversity Adviser
Personnel Department
University of Brighton
01273 642835

-----Original Message-----
From: HE Administrators equal opportunities list
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Katya Hosking
Sent: 13 June 2007 11:29
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Data analysis for impact assessment

Dear all,

We're currently conducting an impact assessment of admissions, and it
has proved surprisingly difficult to extract and analyse the relevant
data from the student information management system.  There seem to be
various reasons for this, some of them technical ones which I don't
pretend to understand.  I'm wondering whether this is a common
experience across the sector, or whether it is something to do with our
particular information management systems.

Questions:
What (quantitative) data have you been able to analyse for use in impact
assessments?
Has it been difficult to get hold of the raw data, that is, to extract
it from the system?
Who has been responsible for analysing it, and have they encountered any
major problems?

I'd be very interested to hear your answers, and will compile a summary
for the list if anything useful emerges!

Best wishes,
Katya

_______________________________________________
Katya Hosking  (029) 2087 9218
Accessible Curriculum Officer
Registry, Cardiff University
30-36 Newport Road, Cardiff CF24 0DE
www.cardiff.ac.uk/learning/themes/access/index.html