Dating Agency Members

Are they `Different

Bibliographic Data

ID2934876
AuthorsR Goodwin (0000-0002-2407-7016, Keele University, corresponding author)
Year1990
Volume7
Issue3
Pages423-430
Publication date1990-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Social and Personal Relationships (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0265-4075 • E-ISSN: 1460-3608
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0265407590073007
OpenAlexW2029703551
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited12

Despite the fact that it is becoming increasingly commonplace to find a partner through a dating agency, and there is an increasing awareness among personal relations researchers that dating agencies are a rich source of data, research into such agencies has typically been very limited and sporadic. In the present study, two types of analyses were conducted to examine the representativeness of dating agency members in relation to other indices of a more general population. In the first analysis, demographic comparisons were made between data from a large survey of members of Britain's largest dating agency and recent census information using the criteria of occupation, education and racial background as the comparative data. In the second analysis, the social competence scores of seventy-six young dating agency members on Levenson & Gottman's (1978) Dating and Assertion skills Questionnaire (DAQ) were contrasted with scores on these scales obtained by previous researchers. Results indicated that, as anticipated, dating agency members differed from the more general British population in having attained a higher educational level and in occupying higher status jobs. Paradoxically, however, such otherwise successful individuals had fewer presentation skills than previous DAQ respondents. The implications of such findings and the need for further research are discussed

Agency (philosophy · Assertion · Census · Competence (human resources · Developmental psychology · Population · Representativeness heuristic · Social science · Sociology · Demography · Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior · Gender Roles and Identity Studies · Marriage and Sexual Relationships · Psychology · Social Psychology