Statistical Data on the Growth of the 'Class of 2012' Facebook Groups

The idea that new students are orienting themselves on Facebook without institutional guidance is a reality as discussed previously on the Student Affairs blog. Search Facebook for "Class of 2012" and you can see with your own eyes the trend. But we are lacking the hard data such as what percentage of new students join these groups or how influential are these groups. It's an opportunity for interested academic researchers to investigate as I suspect this is not a short term trend.

Through a very simple study, Brad J. Ward from SquaredPeg has been tracking the activity of the Butler Class of 2012 Facebook Group. His three metrics are the # of Members, Wall Posts, and Discussion Posts.

This is only the current screen shot of Brad's data, but you can follow his latest by visiting his Google Spread Sheet.

I would love to see a series of data points like this one for a big enough sampling of 2012 groups so academia can get a better idea of when new students start engaging in these groups.

Can someone start this now or are we too late and needed to start back in January? I suspect the window of opportunity to track the activity is almost closed for this upcoming school year.

It would also be interesting to see when these groups were created. The group page doesn't say the creation date, but one way to get a rough idea of the creation date is to look at when the first comment was made. The first comment on the Butler group was Jan 4th 2008.

Other open questions I have:

1. Should an official of the institution (probably someone within student affairs / admission) create groups for 2013, 14, 15?
2. Will students use the group if it is school sponsored?
3. Are the students who create the groups student leaders in high school? What is their motivation?
4. Are these students willing to work with (or even be hired by) the institution to manage the group?
5. Are institutions willing to give up the control and outsource the work to an incoming freshman?

Comments

[Bradjward]

Tom - thanks for the post on this. I was planning to post an update of thoughts from the first 2 months and mention some 'key dates' in a post tomorrow for the 3 month mark, so perfect timing!

Thanks again -
Brad

[Tom Krieglstein]

Hey Brad - I'll keep my eye out for it. Do you know of any one else keep similar data?

[Kevin Guidry]

As a researcher, I note that it's difficult for many of us to conduct this kind of research. My IRB specifically states:

"In the case of Face Book and My Space, both sites explicitly state that their site is not for research but for social networking only. Therefore, the IRB will not approve any study wishing to mine these sites without an independent statement from the site sent directly to the IRB prior to the study’s review."

It's certainly not an impossible task but it does place additional hurdles in the way of responsible and thorough research, particularly timely research.

But this topic - overview of student-created groups - sounds like a great research topic for an ambitious Master's or doctoral student to undertake. Any takers?

[Tom Krieglstein]

@ Brad - Nice work on getting a mention on Guy Kawasaki's Blog.

@ Kevin - IRB -Institutional Review Board? That is interesting. Is that policy a standard across the board for any academic researchers at any institution, or just in your case.