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Acceptance of online matchmaking as a culturally legitimate approach to mate selection - and consumer spending on these services - continues to rise. However, online matchmakers' escalating claims that their services derive from scientific methods remain questionable because solid empirical evidence for such claims is rarely offered. Unfortunately, even when available, the quality of such evidence leaves much to be desired due to conceptual as well as technical problems. Such issues are illustrated here by a detailed analysis of an instructive case study of an attempt to validate aspects of the commercial eHarmony.com dating service. Apart from identifying serious logical flaws that invalidate the case study's conclusions, additional shortcomings are identified related to the involved variables, research design, and sampling biases. Because such issues almost certainly play a role in online dating and related research, the paper concludes with a discussion of modern test construction approaches derived from Item Response Theory, and Rasch scaling in particular, that can be used to identify and sometimes correct many of the problems described here. Online dating services must solve many of the problems outlined here to remain a viable and acceptable area of practice and research.
Compatibility seems to be a new buzz word in the vernacular of Western popular culture, considering the wealth of media coverage of the rising trend for online dating companies to conduct romantic matchmaking based on stated personal preferences and alleged personality testing (Egan, 2003; Goot, 2004; Mand, 2004; Mulrine, 2003). This trend is highly relevant to the field of personal relationships since Internet dating services represent a significant and growing segment of online services and the general personals and dating services. Market data for last year alone reveals that web services accounted for approximately 43 percent of the $991 million United States datingservice sector, which also includes print and radio personal ads and other offline operations.i Consumers tripled their spending on Internet dating services between 2001 and 2002, and Jupiter Research expects online dating sites to record over $640 million by 2007. Some have estimated that as many as 22 percent of the 98 million singles in the U.S. in 2002 used online dating.ii As the industry segment grows, its advertising is becoming ubiquitous. Between 2000 and 2003, the number of...