The Lack And Cultivation Of Data Culture In The Institutional Research Of China

In recent years,in order to improve the decision-making quality and form a rational decision-making model in universities,institutional research has made great progress and gradually moved from the initial formation to the standard development stage in China.However,the data is still an obstacle of the development of institutional research in Chinese universities.In order to truly move towards standardized development and provide scientific support for the decision-making of universities,the cultivation of good data culture has become an important breakthrough of the institutional research in China.In order to understand the status quo of data culture of the institutional research in China,this paper constructs three levels of the data culture: materials,values and basic assumptions,which based on the theory of organizational culture of Schein.Then a questionnaire survey has been made according the four cores:open data,value data,trust data and use data.Then semi-structured interviews have been conducted with the administrators in Chinese universities.The results show that the data culture of the institutional research is relatively absent in China,which is mainly manifested in the lack of openness and transparency,the lack of emphasis,the lack of authenticity and objectivity,and the low utilization efficiency of the data.Specifically,research organizations and professionals are insufficient at the materials level,the ideas of making decisions based on data haven’t been formed at the value level,and the concepts about rational decision-making haven’t been developed at the basic assumptions level.The reasons mainly include the lack of construction resources,the lack of guidance and supervision of values,and the lack of the basic assumptions which has not kept pace with the times and so on.In order to cultivate the data culture of the institutional research in China,this paper firstly analyzes the data culture of the university of California in the United States,and finds it relatively mature in terms of material construction,the data-based decision-making values,and the rational decision-making thinking.Therefore,this paper puts forward several strategies for cultivating the data culture of the institutional research in China:Firstly,the material construction of the data culture should be promoted comprehensively,such as setting up institutions,introducing professionals,building data platforms and developing relevant technologies;Secondly,the values of making decisions based on data should be constructed in many ways,for example,college leaders should actively establish scientific values,the government should improve supporting measures,and the society should strengthen the supervision of universities;Thirdly,decision-making concepts with Chinese characteristics should be cultivated actively,such as vigorously promoting the transformation of traditional decision-making model to data-driven decision-making model,and cultivating different decision-making concepts with their own characteristics for different universities.