The International Ombudsman Association (IOA) Code of Ethics and Standards of Practice guide the ethical and practical commitments to confidentiality while ombuds professionals prepare annual reports. Office of Ombuds Services staff engage in practical research with anonymous visitor data to better understand trends and themes in visitor experiences.

The annual report presents a synthesis of visitor traffic trends and themes in visitor experiences based on interpretations of observed particularities (Stake, 1995). The annual report does not provide generalizable claims about the entire population that the office serves, and it does not provide specific information regarding individual visitors. Instead, the annual report presents composite narratives of visitor experiences based on prevalent themes. These themes are identified following the constant comparative methodology (Charmaz, 2014; Corbin & Strauss, 2014), as well as the IOA Uniform Reporting Categories (Dale, Ganci, Miller, & Sebok, 2008). The annual report also presents recommendations on how the campus community could start addressing findings presented in the report.

 

 

References

Charmaz, K. (2014). Constructing grounded theory (2nd ed.). SAGE Publications Ltd.

Corbin, J. M., & Strauss, A. (2014). Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory (4th ed.). SAGE Publications, Inc.

Dale, B., Ganci, J., Miller, D., & Sebok, T. (2008). Comparing apples to apples: development of the IOA Uniform Reporting Categories. Journal of the International Ombudsman Association, 1(1), 8–22.

Stake, R. E. (1995). The art of case study research. Sage Publications, Inc.