After you clarify your inquiry questions, it’s time to generate ideas about: 

• sources of data
• methods of data collection

As you develop preliminary ideas for data collection, you may realize that your purpose and/or questions are too abstract or too time-consuming to tackle in one school year.

Module 4 describes the steps of collecting data in detail. Thinking of data may help you to narrow the inquiry focus or the guiding questions, so don’t skip this step. It will save your CLIP time and frustration later.

You also may want to contact your institutional research person to determine what data already exists or upcoming data collection plans that you could benefit from.