This toolkit exists to provide a step-by-step guide for individuals and groups that need to use a purpose-specific peer group for effective decision-making. (Download a PDF of the Peer Group Toolkit.)
The office of Planning, Analytics, & Institutional Research (PAIR) can assist your team in using this Toolkit. As you plan your process, read the following steps and note where PAIR is available for consultation and analysis assistance.
What is a Peer Group?
Peer groups are lists of higher education institutions that are comparable to JMU on some variable or combination of variables. A peer group might consist of all public schools in Virginia (state peers), all schools that compete in the Sun Belt athletic conference (athletic conference peers), or all schools that commonly admit the same students as JMU (cross-admit peers).
A peer group can also be used to benchmark JMU against a group of comparable institutions for a given purpose, like determining how JMU’s average faculty salary compares against other R2 institutions. This approach can also be used to determine aspirant schools—institutions that are like JMU in many ways, but that have greater performance on some specific indicator (e.g., endowment size). In this case, JMU can set targets for improvement that lead to better outcomes in a particular way.
As JMU evolves as a higher education institution, stakeholders are often interested in comparing us to other institutions. Because peer groups are often very specific in nature, developed for a particular purpose and based on specific characteristics, JMU encourages stakeholders to develop purpose-specific peer groups. Therefore, JMU does not advocate for the use of a single group of peer institutions, but in a process aimed at developing a set of peers based on a particular reason. The following are common peer groups that are often used by JMU stakeholders.
If you are part of any efforts to benchmark JMU against a set of higher education institutions to help achieve a specific purpose not listed below, please review the Peer Group Development Toolkit for step-by-step instructions on how to create a purpose-specific peer group. The process involves the following steps:
Why was the Peer Group Toolkit created?
The university developed the National Peer Group for when an individual or group requires one for any number of general use cases (grants, accreditation reports, etc). However, ideally, a peer group should be developed for a specific purpose, and the factors or variables used to determine the most comparable institutions depend on that purpose. The Institutional Peers Task Force recommended developing a peer group development toolkit for the broader campus community to use when considering how best to benchmark JMU or specific groups on a specific measure of interest.