Contributed by: ElyseRomano on Thursday, February 09 2012 @ 10:04 pm
Last modified on
Every online dating site boasts about their "success stories," hoping to entice new members who are looking for success stories of their own to join up.
But when it comes to online dating, what does "success" actually mean? Does going on dates make your online dating experience a success? Is a long-term relationship the desired successful end result? Is marriage the only measure of online dating success?
Two Ph.D students at Drexel, Rachel Magee and Christopher Mascaro, and their advisor Dr. Sean P. Goggins decided to find out exactly what success means to online daters in a study called "Not Just a Wink and a Smile: An Analysis of User-Defined Success in Online Dating." The team collected success stories dated from 1997 through early 2011from three of cyberspace's most popular dating sites - Match.com, eHarmony.com, and OkCupid.com - then examined the relationship status ("Dating," "Engaged," or "Married") of a random sampling of 20% of the stories.
They found that the definition of "success" varies between the Web sites. eHarmony's success stories are primarily married couples (84%), while the number of married couples on Match and OkCupid are lower (46.7% and 23%, respectively). They also found that the number of success stories on eHarmony and Match increases from "Dating" through "Engaged" to "Married," indicating that they are good options for singles looking for serious, long-term relationships. On the other hand, OkCupid's frequency decreases from "Dating" through "Married."
Success, the researchers determined, is strongly defined as marriage on eHarmony, whereas a successful experience on OkCupid is most commonly defined as dating and the definitions are more evenly distributed on Match. Additional findings showed that most success stories credited the site that brought the couple together in a phrase like "Thank you (site name)," meaning that the dating site chosen to find a partner was a very important part of the story for the couples studied.
So what can other online daters take away from this information? Choose your dating site wisely. All sites are not created equally, and which site you choose is likely to have a significant impact on your online dating experience. Singles who are looking for a relaxed experience and low-key dating should check out OkCupid, while singles who are looking for a serious connection may want to steer clear of it. For long-term relationships and marriage-minded members, Match and eHarmony may be better bets.
For more on the dating sites mentioned you can read our review of Match.com and our review of eHarmony.com.