Essential Assessment Resources for SA Pros

You were asked to do some benchmarking across institutions. You were told we need to understand how students are using lounges. You found out that your director needs information about how people are feeling following your recruitment processes. Well, have no fear! Regardless of your assessment needs, this list is meant to assist you with useful and easy to understand assessment and evaluation tools that you can use in your own work (or share with your team to get aligned on a project). While there are many books and articles below, I will also include a few folks I would recommend following on different platforms and a few other blog locations that could help you in your assessment journey. Happy reading and exploring!

You found out you are involved in assessment or evaluation and just need to get yourself situated within assessment and evaluation work:

O’Leary, Z. (2021). The essential guide to doing your research project (4th Ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Alkin, M. C., & Vo, A. T. (2017). Evaluation essentials: From A to Z (2nd ed). New York, NY: Guilford Publications.

You are working as an assessment leader and are trying to figure out how to collaborate with a team:

O’Sullivan, R. G. (2004). Practicing evaluation: A collaborative approach. Sage.

You have found out you need to design a survey and want to make sure it is worth your time:

Blair J, Czaja RF, Blair EA. (2014). Designing Surveys: A Guide to Decisions and Procedures, 3rd Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.

You are running a survey and don’t know who you should send it to:

Daniel J. (2012). Sampling Essentials: Practical Guidelines for Making Sampling Choices. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.

You found out you are going to do interviews, focus groups, or another qualitative data collection:

Maxwell, J. A. (2013). Qualitative research design: An interactive approach (4th ed.). Sage.

Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2022). Thematic analysis: A practical guide. Sage.

You want to learn more about the theory behind evaluation and assessment work:

Alkin, M. C., & Christie, C. A. (Eds.). (2023). Evaluation Roots: Theory Influencing Practice. Guilford Publications.

You are interested in learning about Culturally Responsive and Equitable Evaluation:

Race and Culturally Responsive Inquiry in Education: Improving Research, Evaluation, and Assessment

Hood, S., Frierson, H. T., Hopson, R. K., & Arbuthnot, K. (2022). Race and culturally responsive inquiry in education: Improving research, evaluation, and assessment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.

Thomas, V. G., & Campbell, P. B. (2020). Evaluation in Today’s World: RespectingDiversity, Improving Quality, and Promoting Usability. Thousand Oaks, CA: SagePublications.

You are trying to decide what is the best way to visualize your data in a report:

From Data to Vis

You made a data visualization, but are not sure if it is as great as it could be:

Rate My Visualization

You want to up your data visualization and reporting game:

Check out Stephanie Evergreen’s blog (and join her newsletter list at the bottom of the page) and follow her on LinkedIn

You aren’t sure what tools you can use for your own data analysis:

Roompact – Great for residence life micro-surveys or smaller scale collection that did not need to go through IRB 🙂
Qualtrics – Great for surveys that are more in-depth or that you needed IRB approval for
Atlas.ti – Great for qualitative data and they offer trainings for free every few months to learn how to use their platform