Case Study Methodology

Our four institutional case studies were designed to supplement the survey results by describing how diverse community colleges connect to local labor markets and what factors inhibit or facilitate such linkages. As in the survey, our primary focus was community college faculty. Unlike the survey, the case studies enable us to explore other types of college-community linkages as well.

Site Selection

The selection of case study sites was limited to the 92 schools that were in the survey sample. Due to time constraints, we could not wait until all survey data was collected to select sites. We therefore conducted a preliminary data analysis when about 75% of the sample was collected to differentiate "high connectivity" and "low connectivity" institutions. To make this determination, we aggregated responses from each school for which we had ten or more responses, and calculated the institutional mean across a sample of survey items for each of the four key domains of connectivity.[16] We then classified institutions according to how far the mean faculty response was above or below the overall mean for that item, and the number of items where a school was above or below the mean.[17] We used various criteria in this exploratory analyses--for example, schools where the mean response was more than one standard deviation above the overall mean response, and so on. Approximately fifteen schools emerged as highly connected, and another seven as weakly connected to local labor markets. (These categorizations were used as a guide; the high/low classification was a statistical artifact not a conceptual one.)

Institutions were selected to provide diversity on the following criteria: Urbanicity and location--we sought institutions in urban, suburban, and rural areas and from different regions of the country; Local economy--we sought institutions in communities with different types of local labor markets, particularly industrial versus service economies, and those that served thriving and highly diversified economies and those that served more depressed areas or areas dependent on a small number of employers or industries; Institutional size--we included institutions with large enrollments (over 20,000 students) and small (under 2,500 students); Institutional mission--we sought colleges that placed differing emphases on the transfer versus vocational missions. Urbanicity, institutional size, and mission information was available to us from the AACC Survey of Colleges, and information on the local economy was inferred from geographic location.

Following this preliminary analysis, we invited five institutions to participate as case study sites. Four accepted, and contact was never established with the fifth due to a change in leadership.

Characteristics of Sites

We studied four institutions in three regions of the country: southern California, a midwestern city, and the rural south. Table 3 displays the characteristics of each site.

Case Study Procedures

Two researchers spent two days at each institution, talking with twelve to thirty different individuals--presidents, administrators, and faculty. Table 4 provides an overview of the respondents.

*Focus group
**Some in focus group; some individually

We used semistructured interview guides throughout the case studies, with slight variations in the guides for different functions or departments. All case studies were conducted during spring or fall, 1996. Interviews lasted between one and two hours. We guaranteed confidentiality of both individual participants and institutions, inviting respondents to speak freely about the challenges and opportunities facing their institution related to increasing linkages to local labor markets.

While interviewing was the predominant means of data collection, we also collected relevant documentation from the campuses, including, as available, course catalogs, institutional fact books, and special reports (e.g., report of institutional task forces, campus climate surveys, or strategic plans). Direct observation also supplemented the interviews. During the site visits, we observed several vocational classes, a departmental curriculum advisory committee meeting, as well as each college's laboratories, classrooms, and other facilities.

In our case studies, we sought to understand the ways institutions and faculty were linked to their local labor markets and communities. Among the issues investigated were (1) the types of linkages the individual respondent and college had established with local labor markets, including any new or especially innovative linkages; (2) the challenges the respondents and college faced in establishing linkages; (3) how the institution encouraged linkages; (4) the perceived importance of linkages; (5) the perceived strength of existing college-community linkages; and (6) future directions for building linkages to local labor markets.

Formal interview protocols asking questions in each of these areas were used, differing slightly by type of person interviewed. An example of an administrator protocol and a faculty protocol are found in Appendix C. We collected any documents the college administrators and faculty were willing to provide. These typically included a fact sheet detailing the college's characteristics, a course catalog, and materials pertaining to community education and contract training such as newsletters and flyers.

[17]Various analyses were conducted: different survey items were examined; academic and vocational instructors' responses were considered separately and together; and alternate ways of measuring "extremes" were used.