Institutional research is a broad category of work done at universities to inform campus decision-making and planning in areas such as admissions, financial aid, curriculum, enrollment management, staffing, student life, finance, facilities, athletics, and alumni relations.

Institutional researchers collect, analyse, report, and warehouse quantitative and qualitative data about their institution's students, faculty, staff, curriculum, course offerings, and learning outcomes. They are involved in collecting and reporting information to relevant clients.

The IRC closes the gaps between information and knowledge and between knowledge and action, which can be referred to as the “thinking gap; know-what” and “knowing-doing gap; know-how” respectively. These gaps denote the IR practitioner’s ability or inability to transform existing data, information and knowledge into meaningful action. This is referred to as “know-how” that embraces the ability to put “know-what” into practice.