Call for research proposals

Research partnerships

GreatSchools strongly values research and wants to equip more researchers with our data so they can produce valuable insights on how education information can help parents and students. We invite research proposals that utilize GreatSchools’ data to answer education research questions, including:

How do parents use education information? What kinds of school data has the largest influence on parents’ impressions of school quality, preferences, and/or education decisions?

• When parents are choosing a school, what sources of information do they seek out and rely on? What’s the value of information like GreatSchools and school-level report cards compared to social networks? What are ways to increase parent utilization of objective sources of information? How does this vary for students?
• When viewing GreatSchools’ school profiles, what influence do they have on parents’ (and students’) views on school quality? On school preferences as measured by ranked lists, applications to or enrollment in schools?
• What school information is best to support advocacy and advocacy actions? How GreatSchools’ school profiles influence parents’ and others’ actions in terms of engagement with and demand for better local schools?

What’s the best way to help parents support their child’s education?

• What types of parent engagement activities have the largest influence on their children’s education success?
• What’s the influence that GreatSchools’ parent content have on parents’ attitudes, knowledge, and behaviors related to support their child’s academic and social development?
• How does increased parent engagement translate into child/student outcomes?

Proposal

To request access to GreatSchools data, please review information on available data and related costs and then submit a short research proposal with the following information to research@greatschools.org:

• Your name, affiliation, and title
• Primary research questions
• Methodological approach
• Expected benefits and implications of the study
• Preliminary publication plans
• Any other information you think may be relevant

Criteria

GreatSchools will prioritize data sharing with researchers pursuing mission-adjacent or mission-aligned research projects. To learn more about our organization, please visit the About Us section on our webpage. Depending on the scope of the data request, we may request a fee to coverage staff time to create the specific dataset for your project but aim to minimize costs for research that contributes to understanding the use of education information, particularly for the sake of improving equity and examining the impact of GreatSchools’ content.