Why Parents Worry

So Newsweek had these interesting tidbits in the magazine pages this week:

22% of parents say their greatest concern regarding their college-age child is health and safety.
20% say that the issue troubling them the most is their college-age child's performance in school.
18% of parents report that career planning is their biggest worry about their college student.

Their source is cited as: "Based on Univerisity of Minnesota's Parent Survey."

The first thing to think about here is the wording is all confusing, because one would hope that these three statistics would be related (they all are placed in their own blue box on the page). And yet, the first number speaks of their "college-age" child, who may or may not be in college. I have no survey to back this up, but I will guess that 22% of parents are concerned about the health and safety of their any-age child. The second one seems to tell me that of all the troubles parents have in their lives, they think the most about their college-age childs performance in school. And the last reports that they worry about career planning when they think about their college student. At least this child is definitely in college. However, are the parents planning the career or the students?

Secondly, where are these statistics coming from? An online survey of course! Given by the UMinnesota Parents and can be seen here. January 2006 was when they did the survey. Here are those results:

This year, what has been your greatest concern regarding your student's University experience?
114 said academics
115 said health/safety
82 said finances
96 said career planning
27 said campus involvement
70 said time management
66 said personal relationships
14 said other

Note that 114 and 115 are almost the same, so let's run the numbers. The total people surveyed was 584. 114/584=19.52%... almost 20%. 115/584=19=19.69%, not that close to 22%, huh? But if you add in the people who marked other... 14+115=129 and 129/584=22.08%. Who knows where Newsweek actually got that percentage, or what they're trying to prove, but something is fishy here. And this is before it even started getting analyzed. Percentages aren't exactly rocket science.

And on my last note, who are these parents? The ones sending their kid to a four year state college. Thats a pretty small parent sample. What about all the parents who send their kids to elite private schools? Or two-year community colleges? Or no school? etc.

For future reference, this was the May 22, 2006 edition of Newsweek, page 57.