This first measurement was nominal, and in regards to the phrase “I Love You”, and whether males or females typically say it first. This is interesting to me because my study is on communication in relationships.
- “Participants included 47 heterosexual couples (94 total individuals) drawn from an online community sample (mean age = 33, range = 18–69). This sample was taken from a pool maintained by a northeastern university, though the actual location of participants ranged throughout the United States. Out of these 47 couples, seven disagreed about who confessed love first in their relationship. There were no systematic biases for gender among those couples that disagreed. All participants were involved in long-term, committed relationships, lasting from 14 to 376 months (M = 84 months).”
“Participants were informed that they were required to currently be in a romantic relationship in which “I love you” had been said at least once by at least one partner and that other current romantic partners would be recruited to complete the study as well. Upon agreeing, participants were directed to an online survey featuring relationship questions, including who confessed love first in the relationship. At the conclusion, partner e-mail addresses were collected and partners were contacted. We collected demographic information from each partner to ensure couple validity. Once each member of a couple completed the study, each participant was mailed $10.”
The strength of this method is that the couples that couldn’t agree on who said it first were discarded from the data set and that there also is a very wide range of relationship maturity. The weakness of the study is that there were only 47 couples involved.
In study number two, I believe it is the ratio level of measurement. This study was interesting to me as well because it is the effects of intimate communication amongst couples.
“2. Participants included 84 female and 35 male undergraduates from a southwestern U.S. university (mean age = 21). All procedures took place on paper questionnaires, and participants received course credit as compensation. Participants completed the study in groups of one–three.
This study used a 2 (participant sex) × 2 (confession timing: pre-sex, post-sex) between-subjects design. Participants received a paper questionnaire that included two sections. The first section presented a scenario asking participants to imagine they were beginning a new romantic relationship with someone they found “attractive and interesting.” The scenario explained that the couple had started dating and detailed many common behaviors that the couple had engaged in (e.g., spending time with each other, eating together, meeting friends). One of these details—whether sexual intimacy had occurred in the relationship thus far—constituted the experimental manipulation. Half of the participants read that they had already been sexually intimate in the budding relationship, whereas the other half read that they had not yet been sexually intimate. This detail was included in the bigger list of details with no special attention drawn to it and thus acted as a subtle cue to the onset of sexual activity. At the end of the scenario, all participants read that, 1 month into the relationship, their partner made the first deep statement about romantic feelings by saying “I love you.” Participants then indicated how much happiness they felt after hearing “I love you” from their romantic partner on a scale ranging from 0 (“not at all”) to 7 (“very much”).
The next item after the sex/no-sex scenario assessed judgments about how long into a relationship it becomes acceptable to say “I love you.” Participants were asked again to imagine that a dating partner had recently confessed love. Participants then responded to this item: “When does it generally become acceptable to admit love in a new romantic relationship?” The choices included 1 (“first day”), 2 (“two to three days”), 3 (“one week”), 4 (“two to three weeks”), 5 (“one month”), 6 (“two to three months”), 7 (“six months”), 8 (“1 year”), and 9 (“two or more years”).
Finally, given that participants who are already in committed romantic relationships may feel less happiness when imagining someone else express their love, we measured current romantic relationship status to control for potential differences between single participants and participants currently in committed relationships (exclusion of this variable did not change the results reported next).”
The weakness of this study is that there isn’t an even number of male and female data, so we cant assume this to be as accurate as it would be with more participants. The strength is that it gives a true difference between how men and women perceive the phrase and how they react to it.
*Emotional reactions to imagining (Study 4; Panel A) or recalling (Study 5; Panel B) being told “I love you” as a function of sexual activity in romantic relationships.*
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