Yahoo Personals Dating Preferences Study - Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Atlanta, 2004-2005 (ICPSR 36347)
Version Date: Jan 4, 2016 View help for published
Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s)
Cynthia Feliciano, University of California-Irvine;
Belinda Robnett, University of California-Irvine
https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR36347.v1
Version V1
Summary View help for Summary
The Yahoo Personals Dating Preferences Study sought to examine the dating preferences of online daters in four major metropolitan areas: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Atlanta. Internet daters' profiles of self-identified Asian, Black, Latino, and White men and women seeking opposite-sex dates were collected and coded from Yahoo Personals, which was the most popular national online dating web site in 2004 and 2005. Data were collected on subjects' height, body type, smoking and drinking habits, whether subjects had children, religious service attendance, languages spoken, and miles subjects were willing to travel for a date. Data were also collected on subjects' preferences for dates, including preferred physical appearance, lifestyle behaviors, living situation, employment status, occupation, children, religious service attendance, and languages spoken. Demographic information collected includes subjects' sex, age, ethnicity, marital status, education, political affiliation, and religious affiliation.
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Subject Terms View help for Subject Terms
Geographic Coverage View help for Geographic Coverage
Smallest Geographic Unit View help for Smallest Geographic Unit
metropolitan area
Distributor(s) View help for Distributor(s)
Time Period(s) View help for Time Period(s)
Date of Collection View help for Date of Collection
Study Design View help for Study Design
Yahoo personals online dating profiles were downloaded and coded.
Sample View help for Sample
Two hundred profiles each from 18-50 year old self-identified Asian, Black, Latino or White men and women seeking opposite-sex dates living within 50 miles of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago or Atlanta were collected and coded, for a total sample size of 6,070. The targeted sample size was 6,400 in order to allow for robust statistical tests of differences across three strata: gender, race, and metropolitan area. The sample size is smaller than targeted because there were fewer than 200 Latina and Asian male profiles posted in Atlanta, and several duplicate profiles were eliminated. To extract the sample, the search criteria on the Web site was used to display all the profiles for each gender and race combination in the age range within 50 miles of each city. Then, to get as representative a sample as possible within each race/gender combination in each city, profiles were sorted by how recently they were posted or edited; the first 200 profiles that appeared within each race/gender/city were then selected.
Time Method View help for Time Method
Universe View help for Universe
Users of Yahoo Personals online dating Web site.
Unit(s) of Observation View help for Unit(s) of Observation
Mode of Data Collection View help for Mode of Data Collection
HideOriginal Release Date View help for Original Release Date
2016-01-04
Version History View help for Version History
- Feliciano, Cynthia, and Belinda Robnett. Yahoo Personals Dating Preferences Study - Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Atlanta, 2004-2005. ICPSR36347-v1. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2016-01-04. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR36347.v1
2016-01-04 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:
- Standardized missing values.
- Created online analysis version with question text.
- Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.
Weight View help for Weight
The data are not weighted. There are no weight variables present in the data.
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These data are freely available to data users at ICPSR member institutions. The curation and dissemination of this study are provided by the institutional members of ICPSR. How do I access ICPSR data if I am not at a member institution?