Your job as a researcher for a college is going well. You have gained confidence and skill at pulling data and you are not making as many rookie mistakes. The college executives are begging to take notice of your skills. The college has had serious problems with reporting in the past for several reasons. One problem is there was no centralized department for numbers. Human Resources did some reporting, financial aid another, and the rest was covered by the registrar's office. It was difficult to determine simple things like number of students enrolled in the fall semester because different departments would generate different. The higher ups want one consistent number they can rely on and they think your department should be in charge of generating that number.

As the first report as the official office numbers they want you to generate a report that tracks student demographics over time (a longitudinal study). Your college has a large percentage of its student body who are affiliated with the military (active duty military, retired military, military spouse, military dependent). For this study the college executives want to see how they stack up to other colleges that have a large percentage of military students.

After doing some research you find a field in the database that named mil_status. The documentation you have on the field says this is the field you are looking for. Since you need to determine when the student was in the military to generate this report you look for a start and end date associated with mil_status. Sure enough the table also has a mil_status_start and a mil_status_end field. These fields when combined with enrollment data allow you to determine if a student was in the military when they were a student.

You query the data to check for bad dates and discover a serious issue. Most of the start dates and end dates are NULL. You once again make some quick phone calls to find out what's going on. It seems this field is not populated unless the college receives official paperwork from the military listing the soldier's enlistment date. In addition to this you find out that students are not required to update their information ever semester. This means once their mil status is set it is unlikely to ever change.

Based on this information address the following:

• What recommendation(s) would you make to the college's executives to address this issue?
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• Collecting this data will have tangible and intangible costs associated with it. For example requiring official paper work adds an extra burden on registration and on the student. Students may decide to go elsewhere instead of supplying the paperwork or may stop identifying themselves as military. The executives want the data but they don't want its collection to impact enrollment or place an undue burden on registration (the line is long enough already). How would you respond to these concerns?
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• You noticed something odd in the mil_Status field. The possible values are "Active Duty Military", "Military spouse", "Retired military", "Military Reserves", and "Military dependent". In what way is this field problematic? How could you fix it?

Answer rating: 100% (QA)

Addressing the Issue of Incomplete Military Status Data Recommendations to College Executives a Clarify Data Collection Policies Its essential to clarify and formalize the colleges policies regarding ... View the full answer