The operation of a system office for community college institutional research occurs in a majority of the fifty states, and how states handle institutional research functions can vary for a variety of reasons. In this chapter, the authors review the results of a survey of the fifty states and the District of Columbia to see which states have system offices that are focused on community college institutional research. They then test some hypotheses about state environmental factors that could affect the existence of such system offices and discuss some implications of these findings. (Contains 2 tables.)