The Office of the Provost is committed to facilitating scholarly and quality improvement research using deidentified administrative student data. To this end, we have formalized a process for researchers to request and receive administrative student data. More information about the process for submitting a request and the different data sets that are available is below.
Description of the Process
Researchers who are interested in accessing deidentified administrative student data should complete the “Data Request Form” linked form below. The data request form includes fields for project title, project personnel, a description of the project, description of the data requested, and a plan for data disposal.
Data requests will be reviewed by the appropriate person within the Office of Provost and a formal decision will be communicated within 2 weeks of receiving the request. Researchers, however, may still need to submit a proposal through the Institutional Review Board, depending on whether their research project is considered Human Subjects Research. Once the project receives IRB approval (or is deemed not to need it), researchers will then be connected with Pitt IT staff who will assist in providing the necessary data. In addition, researchers will be asked to sign a Data Use Process and Procedures form.
Description of the Data Sets
Degree Data: Information about the term, degree type, school, and academic plan (major) of degrees awarded.
Demographic Data: Demographic information about students including gender; race; citizenship; incoming test scores; and academic program, academic plan, and academic subplan at first enrollment.
Term Data: For each term, the academic program, academic plan, enrollment status (FT or PT), Student-Athlete status, number of courses, term GPA, and cumulative GPA.
Test Score Data: Test scores on a variety of tests (i.e., SAT, ACT)
Course-Level Data: For each term, the courses a student attempted, including number of credits, grade in the course, if the course fulfilled the writing requirement, if the course was a college in high school course, if the course was a repeat attempt, and the date the student enrolled in the course. In addition, for each term, grade distributions (including mean, median, and standard deviation) for each course.