Ohio Higher Education Information (HEI)
Student enrollment, course records, financial aid data, personnel files, facilities records, and finance data submitted by public colleges and universities in Ohio.
students, staff, programs, and courses at public colleges and universities in Ohio
Access
Ohio Higher Education Information data are available by request to researchers through the Ohio Longitudinal Data Archive (OLDA) housed at Ohio State University’s Center for Human Resources Research (CHRR). To request access, researchers must submit an application to Ohio Analytics including information about the research team, research design, project timeline, and data security plan. Researchers must also sign a data-sharing Memorandum of Understanding with the Ohio Education Research Center and obtain IRB approval.
If the request is approved, researchers must complete Ohio State University’s Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI) human subjects training and sign security and confidentiality agreements with CHRR. Using CHRR’s online Investigator portal, which contains metadata and data definitions for various data sets, researchers assemble a list of desired data elements (which OLDA calls a “tagset”). After the tagset is submitted, CHRR staff extract, review, and send the data to the researcher.
Timeline for Access
Most data are reported and updated annually. The projected timeline for data access approval may take up to several months; the agency cautions that the multi-step approval process will vary according to the availability of data, the complexity of the request, and the staff time needed to prepare, match, and review data.
After the end date specified in the initial data request, researchers must destroy or return all data and notify CHRR (unless the researcher and agency agree to an extension). Researchers are also required to submit their findings for review with the data-providing agency 21 days prior to sharing with an external audience.
Lag Time
CHRR updates most Higher Education Information data annually in the first quarter of the year following a completed academic year (e.g., hypothetical data from the academic year 2018-2019 becomes available in early 2020). Some datasets are updated more frequently.
Cost
CHRR charges service fees based on staff time and computer resources required to process data requests. Fees vary project-to-project. CHRR will provide researchers with a cost estimate during the application process.
Linking
The primary intent of the OLDA is to enable researchers to request data from multiple state agencies internal to CHRR on the same set of individuals and receive a merged, de-identified file (or the data necessary to create one) through the use of pseudo-identifiers included in OLDA data. CHRR will not provide identified data to researchers; in some cases, CHRR staff may perform the link and provide researchers with the de-identified results, while in others researchers may only be able to work with data on-site.
Identifiers Available for Linking
- Higher Education Information pseudo-identifier (coded as HEI_PSID in the Investigator portal)
- OLDA unique identifier number (coded as KEY_ID in the Investigator portal)
- While the above identifiers are available in HEI data sets, CHRR does not list specific identifiers as requirements for locating and matching individual student records.
Linking to Outside Data Sources
HEI data can be linked to other administrative data sets in the OLDA from the Ohio Department of Education, Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, and Opportunities for Ohioans with Disabilities. Researchers can perform this linkage using the OLDA unique identifier number (coded as KEY_ID in the Investigator portal), which is the same for each unique individual in the OLDA across data sets.
Linkages to outside data sets require careful planning, as CHRR cannot share identified data with researchers. CHRR staff perform linkages to data sets not included in the OLDA. They strip identifying information from the linked data set and return a de-identified file to researchers. In cases where re-identification is a concern, researchers may be required to work on-site in CHRR offices.
Data Contents
HEI data in the OLDA are organized at the student-level and are split by year and term. HEI data also include student demographics data and faculty data.
Partial List of Variables
Demographic information, cumulative credit hours, GPA, year graduated from high school, college/university attended, degree information, major field of study, state residency status, subsidy eligibility, financial aid information
J-PAL Randomized Evaluations Using this Data Set
Bettinger, Eric P., Bridget Terry Long, Philip Oreopoulos, and Lisa Sanbonmatsu. 2012. “The Role of Application Assistance and Information in College Decisions: Results from the H&R Block FAFSA Experiment.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 127 (3): 1205–42. doi:10.1093/qje/qjs017.