I intend to conduct a usability study on a website (say an elementary school) to find out about ease of use, learnability etc., the first group of prospective users I would approach are parents for taking a usability survey, as they represent the broader population (target users).
Do you believe it is practical to gather data from a different audience, say college students, who may not be using the website at all, but at least have an insight about features and content of a regular Web 2.0 website, and what is expected when a user would access the elementary school's site?