Student engagement in now part of the higher education lexicon in North America. This volume explains the value and relevance of the construct, with an emphasis on how results from the national Survey of Student Engagement have been used for various purposes.

Because process indicators are often used as proxy measures for institutional quality, the chapter authors discuss how student engagement data can help colleges and universities satisfy the demand for more evidence, accountability, and transparency of student and institutional performance.

Chapters discuss:

1. The National Survey of Student Engagement: Conceptual and Empirical Foundations
2. The Use of Engagement Data in Accreditation, Planning, and Assessment
3. Analyzing and Interpreting NSSE Data
4. The Role of Precollege Data in Assessing and Understanding Student Engagement in College
5. Effectively Involving Faculty in the Assessment of Student Engagement
6. Converting Engagement Results into Action
7. Toward Relfective Accountability: Using NSSE for Accountability and Transparency
8. NSSE, Organizational Intelligence, and the Institutional Researcher

The widespread uses of student engagement results have helped to increase the visibility and importance of campus assessment efforts and of institutional researchers, who provide campus leaders with objective, trustworthy data about student and institutional performance.

This is the 141st volume of the Jossey-Bass quarterly report series New Directions for Institutional Research. Always timely and comprehensive, New Directions for Institutional Research provides planners and administrators in all types of academic institutions with guidelines in such areas as resource coordination, information analysis, program evaluation, and institutional management.