A Quantitative Analysis of Online Dating
Online dating is gaining momentum and is an easy, socially acceptable way to find partners for dates or relationships. To a social scientist, the wealth of data stored on online dating services has enormous potential in the study of interpersonal relationships. Instead of having to take surveys and interview people, scientists can now discover findings by looking at the statistics of what actually happened. Actions speak louder than words. Never before has something so human and primitive been reducible to such quantitative discrete values.
This study of an online dating service measures the importance of a matching characteristic when choosing a partner. The data is extracted from the contacts initiated by the users.
Characteristic - Increased Contact
Marital status 1.64x
Wants children 1.54x
Number of children 1.39x
Physical build 1.28x
Smoking 1.25x
Physical appearance 1.23x
Educational level 1.19x
Religion 1.17x
Race 1.14x
Drinking habits 1.12x
Pet preferences 1.11x
Pets owned 1.08x
Demographic findings in this study:
* 62.8% of members were male and 37.2% were female, but 55% of active members were female
* The median age for men was 36 and women was 33
* 78.2% of messages were never responded to
* Members sent an average of 1.5 messages
* Men initiated 73.3% of messages, but their initiations were 17.9% less likely to be reciprocated
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