Perception of Dating at CMU

Motivations for the Project Disproportionate number of males to females at CMU. Males feel frustrated with the current ratio. Females are not as affected by this ratio. How far is this from the truth?

Method Target population: Carnegie Mellon University undergraduate students. Sampling Frame: All undergraduate Andrew IDs. Proportionally allocated. Electronic mail survey – encourages high response rate.

Response Rates Intended response rate: 50% First mailing response rate: 42 % (83/256) Second mailing response rate: 21.39%(37/173) Third mailing response rate: 12.5% (17/136) Phone response rate: % (19/119) Total current response rate: 60.93%

Survey design Objective: To create a valid and reliable survey. Used open ended questions. Brief precise questions. Pre-tested survey: – Generated interesting questions. – Found we excluded GSIA. – Added question as a result of suggestion. – Removed loaded questions.

Confidentiality Alerted subjects to their confidentiality with a quick note at the beginning of the survey. Randomly selected subjects. Stripped coded responses of any identifying information. Dealing with non-respondents. Sent blind carbon copies to subjects

Single Categorical Charts

Age Breakdown

College Breakdown

Ethnicity Breakdown

Social Clubs

Interested in Dating

Would you date out of Your Race?

Relationship Breakdown

Have you altered your standards?

Dating Better in High School/CMU ?

Would your Interest Date You?

Cross Categorical Charts

Relationships of the Sexes

Reasons for Not Dating

Standards by Class

Standards by College

Statistical Analysis 95% Confidence Intervals for difference in proportions Proportion of (males – females) who prefer high school dating = (0.267, 0.604) Shows more males prefer high school than females

Interesting Findings Altered Standards – Two extreme cases of Male/Female ratios – HSS (good ratio => less people had to alter standards) – SCS (bad ratio => more people had to alter standards) Relationships – (proportion of Females in relationship greater than males => statistically significant difference) Ethnicity – No statistically significant difference between males and females – Surprising because the current ratio seems to imply that women would be less willing to date outside their ethnicity

Problems encountered Negative responses. Homosexuality. Easier to have coded results through a web site.

Interesting responses I usually don't try to date people from CMU, I go after people who are from other colleges (Pitt, etc ) because people at CMU usually are too busy and too ugly. Hard to say- the girls here can be more interesting (intellectually/culturally) but much less interested in dating (anyone). High school on the other hand offered girls who were in fact interested in going out. The girls here are generally less good looking than most other places; also I've had to get used to girls of different ethnicity. My standards used to be: hot Caucasian girl. My standards now: a girl.

Interesting Responses (cont.) Ive altered my standards in the sense that people I never would have considered dating before I would consider now. Not because of lack of people, but because Id never met anyone like that or I had stereotypes concerning them. High school all the way. That was paradise compared to this. The girls in my high school were very attractive and plentiful. There were enough girls to go around. Here all the good ones are taken and they are way too few in number. The other girls here are not attractive or are of unattractive ethnicity (a question of personal preference, but still...). CMU sucks vs.any other school (except MIT).

Questions?