Research Overview

30 Apr 2024
2 minute read

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Research Overview

Updated 30 Apr 2024
2 minute read

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Slate provides a standard Research tab that enables storing and managing data from both external and internal sources. This data can be source-specific from a provider (such as rating or score) or it can be more generally applicable information that may be provided from multiple sources.

The Research tab appears to the left of the Profile tab for a record when there is at least one configured Research Source matching the record's scope.

Create custom research sources and data keys to store your own research methods and data elements on a constituent's record and allow staff to add their own sources of information to a constituent's record.

Research-scoped materials can be created and associated with individual research items. These materials support material metadata functionality.

In all cases, research data is entirely accessible for querying and reporting. Materials can be uploaded to Slate and directly associated with research records, providing immediate access to any necessary primary or backup source.

Research: An Overview Video

Technolutions staff members provide an overview of the Research functionality. Topics discussed in the webinar include when to utilize Research vs when to utilize an entity, research sources, data keys (shared vs private), permissions, research materials, and how to add research to a record.

💻 Access Recording
Original air date: 2/23/2021
Watch webinar: Research: An Overview

Enabling Research in your Database

Research is currently available as an Early Access feature. To enable it:

From the top navigation, select Database.
From the Configurations section, select Configuration Keys.
From the Database Configuration section, select Early Access Features.
Select Research, then click Save.
As with all configuration changes, the effect may take up to 15 minutes to be reflected across all web nodes.
A link to access the Research Configurations displays in the 'Configurations' section of the database.

Examples

📃 Admissions

Engagement scoring

Among other things, admissions clients can use research to calculate an engagement score. By creating research sources for each avenue of prospect engagement, you can view trends and create outreach lists to target the most promising prospects.

Pre-configured research sources

Admissions clients can take advantage of two pre-configured research sources in the Research Configuration Library: College Board Landscape and Capture Higher Ed.

Data Tagging - College Board Landscape

Landscape is a free resource that provides applicant high school and neighborhood information.

The College Board Landscape Research Source lets you store data on a person record based on the high school, neighborhood, and score data provided to College Board.

📖 Further reading:

Engagement Scoring - Capture Higher Ed

Capture Higher Ed uses their Behavioral Intelligence Platform to help institutions reduce their marketing spend per student and increase enrollment. This integration allows institutions to send their prospective student data to Capture and to receive engagement scores back from Capture into Slate.

📖 Further reading:

🤝 Advancement

Institutions typically use the Research tab in combination with one or more external vendors who screen constituent records, returning the data to Slate to be stored and used across the database.

Technolutions partners with DonorSearch and iWave to make this data screening very straightforward. A library of items enables institutions to easily search for records, export a file in a standardized format to the vendor, and automatically consume the returned file that contains the screened records.

Example of DonorSearch research data:

📖 Further reading:

Example of iWave research data:

📖 Further reading:

🎓 Student Success

Examples of research for a student success database include:

Psychological assessments
Evaluating at-risk students regarding poor academic performance
Compiling data on dataset records such as scholarly articles and publications for faculty or staff

📖 Further reading

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Research Tab

Table of contents

Research: An Overview Video
Enabling Research in your Database
Examples
📖 Further reading