Post-Positivism
Contribution: Systematic empirical inquiry, measurement, probabilistic explanation, and methodological rigor.
Question: How do power and institutional structure shape what is measured?
A research paradigm for institutional equity accountabilityDeveloped by J. Quinton Staples II, Ed.D.
LiberationQuant
Counting What Counts
A post-QuantCrit paradigm that shifts the central question of equity research.
What is the institution doing, what conditions has it created, and what evidence can it produce to demonstrate that its commitments are structurally real?
The framework treats institutions—not students alone—as the primary object of accountability. It examines the resources institutions allocate, the authority they distribute, the policies they enact, the interventions they sustain, and the evidence they produce.
01 / Premise
Why LiberationQuant?
Higher education does not suffer from a shortage of data.
Institutions routinely track retention, persistence, graduation, satisfaction, belonging, climate, and demographic disparities. Many have sophisticated dashboards, institutional research functions, assessment systems, and increasingly advanced analytics platforms.
The problem is often not the quality of the technology. It is the logic of measurement.
When institutions measure the experiences and outcomes of students without simultaneously measuring the structures that shape those outcomes, accountability can become displaced. Students remain visible in the data while institutional decisions about funding, staffing, authority, policy, governance, and implementation remain comparatively invisible.
If inequity is produced structurally, then structural behavior must itself become measurable.
The purpose is not to abandon student-outcome data. It is to place those outcomes inside a measurement architecture capable of examining institutional responsibility.
02 / Lineage
The Epistemic Move
An intellectual lineage, not a rejection of what came before.
Critical Paradigm
Contribution: Attention to power, ideology, oppression, structural inequality, and emancipation.
Question: How can those critiques be operationalized within quantitative systems of accountability?
QuantCrit
Contribution: Numbers are not neutral; categories are socially produced; data must be interpreted within structural conditions.
Question: What evidence should institutions be required to produce?
LiberationQuant
Rather than beginning only with data institutions chose to collect, it specifies the evidence institutions should produce if equity is a genuine commitment.
interpretation → specification
student outcome → institutional behavior
description → accountability
03 / Architecture
Triggers · Tracking · Treatment
Three dimensions make institutional accountability testable.
I
Triggers
What must become visible?Triggers identify disparities, exclusions, policy conditions, demographic patterns, and structural signals that require deeper institutional examination. Where relevant data do not exist, absence should not be mistaken for proof that no problem exists.
- Which populations disappear through aggregation?
- Which questions are never asked?
- What conditions trigger deeper analysis?
- What does missing data reveal about priorities?
II
Tracking
What did the institution actually do?Tracking follows decisions across time and creates a longitudinal record of institutional action, inaction, investment, and withdrawal. Patterns among marginalized populations direct attention toward institutional behavior.
- What was funded—or defunded?
- Who gained or lost authority?
- What policy or intervention changed?
- Which structural barriers remained?
III
Treatment
Can it demonstrate follow-through?Treatment examines whether an institution funded, authorized, implemented, sustained, and evaluated the conditions it claimed were necessary for equitable outcomes.
- What did it commit to?
- What did it change and resource?
- What did it sustain?
- What happened as a result?
04 / Evidence
From Student Outcomes to Institutional Evidence
A student outcome is not a complete explanation.
Rather than asking only: “Why did this population have a lower retention rate?”
LiberationQuant asks what changed in institutional investment, staffing, authority, policy, access, or implementation during the period in which the disparity occurred.
Rather than asking only: “Do students report belonging?”
It asks what institutional structures produce, constrain, resource, or sustain the conditions under which belonging becomes possible.
LiberationQuant does not reject retention rates, graduation rates, belonging measures, climate surveys, or other student-centered indicators. It moves quantitative inquiry closer to the mechanisms institutions actually control.
05 / Application
An Illustrative Application
Explaining the institutional conditions surrounding students.
Dr. Staples’s research on Multicultural Student Programs and Services examined the relationship among institutional investment in MSPS, the positional authority of unit directors, and student retention.
Institutional funding for MSPS predicted retention outcomes for students of color, while leadership authority amplified the effect of those resources.
What resources did the institution provide? Who had authority to deploy them? What could those arrangements produce?
Read conventionally, the results describe relationships among organizational variables and student outcomes. Read through LiberationQuant, the emphasis moves from explaining students to explaining the institutional conditions surrounding them.
06 / Uses
What LiberationQuant Can Be Used For
For questions that move beyond whether disparities exist.
Designed for scholars, institutional researchers, assessment professionals, higher education leaders, policymakers, and practitioners examining what institutional arrangements produce, sustain, reduce, or conceal inequity.
- Resource allocation
- Organizational authority
- Equity infrastructure
- Institutional policy
- Student-success interventions
- Demographic representation
- Staffing and administrative capacity
- Program sustainability
- Institutional accountability
- Longitudinal organizational change
07 / Current Work
Current Work
An emerging framework across three related projects.
LiberationQuant: A Post-QuantCrit Paradigm for Institutional Accountability in Educational Research
A developing manuscript articulating the epistemological foundations, unit of analysis, methodological logic, and Triggers–Tracking–Treatment architecture.
Request the working paper →Counting What Counts: A Research Paradigm for Institutional Equity Accountability
Presented as part of the Data, Analytics & Data-Informed Decision-Making track at the EDUCAUSE 2026 Annual Conference.
Request presentation materials →Unit Power, Student Belonging, and the ROI of Equity
Empirical work examining how institutional investment and organizational authority shape educational outcomes.
View related research →08 / Development
A Framework in Development
Visible, active, and open to serious engagement.
The framework represents ongoing conceptual and methodological work being prepared for peer review. Definitions, applications, and operational measures may continue to develop through scholarly critique, empirical application, and methodological testing.
The purpose of making the framework visible during this stage is not to present it as settled.
If institutions are expected to produce equity, what evidence should they be required to produce about themselves?