Comparable worth and pay equity issues are considered, along with implications for college institutional researchers. Comparable worth is generally defined as a policy of paying equal pay for work of comparable value. After discussing the issues and tracing relevant legislation, attention is directed to ways that the institutional research office can work with the personnel director, affirmative action officer, recruitment staff, and legal staff. Included are data on average earnings of men and women by age, salary differences for working women and men based on marital status, and women's and men's earnings for different occupations. Advantages of comparable worth include elimination of alleged wage discrimination, reversal of historical stereotypes that have undervalued women's jobs, while disadvantages include the fact that there is no universal standard of how to measure comparable worth and that implementation costs are high. A faculty member alleging a violation of the Equal Pay Act must show that the employer paid more to a faculty member of the opposite sex for the performance, under similar working conditions, of a job requiring substantially equal skill, effort, and responsibility. (SW)