During his employment at Goddard College, Chickering started in on the research for his theory. The research, which he began in 1959 and finished in 1969, involved surveying college students. The students were traditional in age, and were enrolled as sophomores through senior. Chickering was involved with the Project on Student Development in Small Colleges, which allowed him to collect additional data from other schools and compile it with the data from his own. In 1969, he published Education and Identity which explained his new theory of student development. His work was revisited and updated in 1972 and again in 1993 in cooperation with Linda Reisser.
