As the father of three children ages 15, 19, and 23, I read books I hope will give me better ideas about how to be an effective parent. On this basis I would strongly recommend MY FRESHMAN YEAR to other parents for its perspective on college life. It would be good if my children would also read this book, but, as the book points out, they have their own priorities.
The book's methodology does raise ethical issues. Is it ethical for a Professor of Anthropology to live in a dorm, take classes for the purpose of writing a book, and not tell students she is a member of the University facility? (She would tell other students who asked directly, but few did.) As a minister, I sat for six years on an Institutional Review Board (IRB) reviewing experiments on human subjects. The gold standard is to get "Informed Consent" before research is conducted. However, sometimes it is impossible to conduct the research and get Informed Consent beforehand. Perhaps passing out Informed Consent forms in a dorm or a classroom on the first day of school would have so inhibited the students that valuable insights into their culture would have been lost.
On the other hand, the Northern Arizona University IRB should have at least required Informed Consent AFTER the research was finished. I would have required Cathy Small to keep a record of the students, staff, and faculty who played key roles in her research. I would require her to send each of these key people an Informed Consent form after her study was over. "INFORMED" should include the fact that she is a professor at NAU. (A test of what should be on a consent form is "If I were the subject of the research, would I want to know that the researcher is a professor at the university I attend as a student?" My answer would be yes.) I would require Small not to include any information obtained from persons who refused to sign the consent. I would require her to destroy any information obtained from persons who refused to sign the consent. That this was not required is the fault of the members of Northern Arizona University IRB.
Finally, there are obvious conflict of interest issues here, because the professor has power over the students when it comes to grades and references. (Small describes how she wrote a reference for one student whom she befriended.) I wonder why the IRB did not require Small to conduct her research at another university where the conflict of interest issues would have been less.
In spite of these ethical issues with the research, I strongly recommend the book to parents like myself who love our children and are spending thousands of dollars to send them to college.
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