changes in people’s lifestyle

The shifts in people's lifestyles are a reflection of how society is now functioning in relation to policy, education, employment, and other socioeconomic variables. This essay addresses these issues while taking into account how improvements in contemporary technology may affect people's quality of life. The primary goal of the essay is to look into the social effects of online dating services that assist singles in meeting potential partners. My main research issue is how different variables affect how people use online dating sites and related services. With a focus on gender and types of Internet meeting, the research is designed to investigate underlying reasons that explain why some people are more likely to start relationships with the help of online dating sites. Influence of four variables–age, gender, educational attainment and social background–will be analyzed using the How Couples Meet and Stay Together (HCMST) dataset.

How Couples Meet and Stay Together (HCMST), a well­–known study of how Americans meet their spouse and romantic couples, surveyed about 4,000 adults and compared traditional and non-traditional couples. It is a follow-up survey that already has five different phases including Wave 1 in 2009, Wave 2 in 2010, Wave 3 in 2011, Wave 4 in 2013, and Wave 5 in 2015. This research will analyze wave 1 data that was collected back in 2009.

The projected outcome of the research will help understand the psychological implication of online dating and its prospect in social life, which will be very useful in the world of social media and information technology that blur the demarcation line drawn by physical distance, and lack of time and courage. It makes this topic important to my area of study as sociology is a study of human social behavior and society, which involves development, human social relationships, networks and organizations. It will be a good chance for the reader to know more about social interactions that take place over the social media platform.

To investigate the associations between variables age, gender, educational attainment, race and the preference for meeting romantic partners online, a χ² test will be conducted followed by a frequency and percentage analysis across variable categories.

Association between gender and preference for Internet meeting

For the critical region corresponds to the probability, p < 0.05, the critical value of χ² is 3.84 at a degree of freedom of 1. Obviously, if the χ² score is ≥ 3.84, we may reject the null hypothesis and accept the research hypothesis; and if the χ² score < 3.84, we fail to reject the null hypothesis and conclude that the gender and preferences for Internet meeting are independent of each other. From the χ² table, we can see that the Pearson value of χ² is 0.050626. This χ² value corresponds to an insignificant value of 0.822, which is less than the critical value of 3.84. This leads to a situation where fail to reject the null hypothesis and conclude that the preference for Internet meeting is independent of the gender of the participants.

In the discussion of gender and preference for Internet meeting, we have two gender groups–male and female; and two response categories–people that prefer meeting their partner online and people who do not. The vast majority of respondents–45.53% men and 44.66% women–report that they never used nor do they prefer an Internet service to meet their partner. But based on the gender difference, 5.04% men report that they meet their partner online, and this response rate is a little bit higher compared to 4.77% of women with the same response. However, in terms of the result of the χ² test, we conclude that people’s preference for Internet meeting is independent of gender, which means that the gender differences between men and women do not explain why some people choose to use Internet service to meet their partner while some others not.

Association between education attainment and preference for Internet meeting

For the critical region corresponds to the probability, p < 0.05, the critical value of χ² is 7.81 at a degree of freedom of 3. If the χ² value ≥ 7.81, we may reject the null hypothesis and if χ² value < 7.81 we may fail to reject the null hypothesis and conclude that the educational attainment and preference for Internet meeting are independent of each other. From the χ² table, we can see that the Pearson value of χ² is 44.268, which corresponds to a significant value of 1.324e-09. It is obvious that we may reject the null hypothesis, which means preference of Internet meeting is dependent of people’s education level.

In discussion of relationships between education attainment and preference for meeting partner online, we categorized people into 4 education groups. According to the bar chart presented below, there is a notable difference in opinions among educational attainment categories. 306 respondents who had less than high school education attainment report that they do not use an Internet service to meet their partner. Among 2996 respondents, 90% of the valid respondents to the question “do you use an Internet service to find your partner” replied negative. Moreover, 31.38% respondents with an advanced university degree do not prefer an Internet dating service, which is 21.17% more often than respondents with less than high school education attainment. Only 9.81% respondents found who met their romantic partner online. Of these 9.81% or 294 participants, 127 have advanced university degree, which constitute the largest group of “Meet online” category in this question. Both “Meet offline” and “Meet online” groups reflect an increased tendency that people who have higher education level are more likely to either reject or use Internet service to meet their partner.

Association between age and preference for Internet meeting

For the critical region corresponds to the probability, p < 0.05, the critical value of χ² is 12.59 at a degree of freedom of 6. If the χ² score is ≥ 12.59, we may reject the null hypothesis and accept the research hypothesis; and if the χ² score is