How Couples Meet and Stay Together (HCMST) 2017, 2020, 2022, United States (ICPSR 38873)
Version Date: Feb 7, 2024 View help for published
Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s)
Michael J. Rosenfeld, Stanford University;
Reuben J. Thomas, University of New Mexico;
Sonia Hausen, Stanford University
https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR38873.v1
Version V1
Summary View help for Summary
How Couples Meet and Stay Together (HCMST) is a study on how Americans meet their romantic partners. This is a nationally representative study of American adult respondents with no overlap in subjects from the original HCMST survey [ICPSR 30103] which was first fielded in 2009.
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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
Region
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
Data Collection Notes View help for Data Collection Notes
- For additional information on the How Couples Meet and Stay Together (HCMST), United States, 2017, 2020, 2022 Study, please visit the study website via Stanford.
Study Purpose View help for Study Purpose
There are two main purposes of this study:
- To bring knowledge of how couples meet up-to-date by asking detailed questions about both the timing and the social contexts of how Americans meet their romantic partners.
- To examine how technology, specifically online dating and cell phone apps like Tinder and Grindr, affect relationship formation, relationship quality, attachment to the idea of monogamy, and relationship stability.
Study Design View help for Study Design
A three-wave longitudinal web survey panel used Ipsos KnowldgePanel to administer and collect survey results.
Sample View help for Sample
The sample size for each study year wave is as follows:
2017 Sample Size: 3,510.
2020 Sample Size: 2,107 (W2_SURVEYED).
2022 Sample Size: 1,722 (W3_SURVEYED).
Time Method View help for Time Method
Universe View help for Universe
English literate adults in the US
Unit(s) of Observation View help for Unit(s) of Observation
Data Type(s) View help for Data Type(s)
Mode of Data Collection View help for Mode of Data Collection
Description of Variables View help for Description of Variables
This study includes variables regarding: how couples met, when couples met (year and month), how COVID impacted new and current relationships, and general demographics of both the respondent and their partner.
Response Rates View help for Response Rates
Response rate was 3510/6753=52% in 2017, 2107/2431=87% in 2020, and 1722/2073=83% in 2022. The denominators in 2020 and 2022 include only subjects who remained in the KnowledgePanel, as they were the only subjects eligible to be contacted.
To account for the response rates of prior inclusion into Ipsos' KnowledgePanel, see Callegaro, Mario, and Charles DiSogra. 2008. "Computing Response Metrics for Online Panes." Public Opinion Quarterly 72(5):1008-1032.
HideOriginal Release Date View help for Original Release Date
2024-02-07
Version History View help for Version History
2024-02-07 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:
- Performed consistency checks.
Weight View help for Weight
Self-identified LGB adults were oversampled in HCMST 2017, and therefore remain oversampled in subsequent waves (2020, 2022). the weights (W1_WEIGHT_COMBO, W2_COMBO_WEIGHT, and W3_COMBO_WEIGHT) correct for this oversample.
Analytic weights have a mean of 1, and account for LGB oversample and are weighted (by Ipsos) to correspond to Current Population Survey values for gender, age, income, region, race, and ethnicity.
Wave 2 and wave 3 have attribution adjusted weights (W2_ATTRITION_ADJ_WEIGHTS, W3_ATTRITION_ADJ_WEIGHT) which adjust the analytic weights for attrition since wave 1.
Wave 1 has a frequency weight (W1_WEIGHT_COMBO_FREQWT) which has a mean value of 69,410. Applying the frequency weight yields a full 2017 US population of adults.
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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?