Much of our planning to date in higher education has focused on questions of internal effectivenes and efficiency, but, given the period of rapid social change we have entered, it is imperative that we improve our abilities to assess changes in the external environment and examine their implications for higher education. In this way we will be able to develop better goals, strategies, and plans to take advantage of emerging opportunities and head off potentially damaging developments. The chapters in this sourcebook consider the problem of assessing the external environment in planning and are primarily concerned with the contributions that tradtional institutional research methods and perspectives make to institutional planning. The purpose of this volume of New Directions for Institutional Research is to describe a variety of futures research techniques and to illustrate their utility for strategic planning. This the 39th issue of New Directions for Institutional Research. For more information on the series, please see the Journals and Periodicals page.