eHarmony
Author: Wikipedia
eHarmony is a marriage-oriented matchmaking website. The company does a great deal of advertising through television and the
internet and requires users to complete a detailed compatibility questionaire. eHarmony was founded by Dr. Neil Clark Warren.
eHarmony's services are selective, not all who apply for the service are accepted.
Dr. Warren, an evangelical Christian, has been closely associated with Focus on the Family and its founder, Dr. James Dobson. Dr.
Warren attributes much the initial success of eHarmony to its being promoted through the Focus on the Family radio show, though the
two organizations have since parted ways, largely in an effort to broaden the market share of Warren's books and that of eHarmony. In
keeping with Warren's evangelical background and focus, eHarmony does not offer services to those seeking same-sex partners.
eHarmony prides itself in success in creating lasting matches among its participants. On the home page of its website, it prominently
displays pictures of couples who met and either became engaged or married. It also allows couples who became involved via
eHarmony to register through their "success stories" department for an opportunity to win a cruise in a drawing.
Methodology
eHarmony boasts to be the internet's number one paid matchmaking service based upon marriages per match. It has rather strict
limitations which Dr. Warren states are solely based on over 35 years of research into successful marriages. Factors "which may limit
a user from experiencing eHarmony's matchmaking service to the fullest" include: homosexuality, still being married, 3 or more
previous failed marriages resulting in divorce, and severe depression. Users are immediately disqualified with extended support from
the complete profile. eHarmony still extends their community forum, newsletters and customer care to these registrants.
Barring disqualification from the above mentioned criteria, a user who completes an initial personality analysis survey (essentially a
personality assessment inventory-type of test) may then specify a number of additional criteria, "self selects" by which to create a
more accurate potential pool of recommended matches. Among the criteria available for the user's specificity are self selected age
range, ethnicity, religious affiliation, geographical vicinity, marital (previous) status (single/divorced/widowed), and maternity/paternity
status (children living with/children living away/no children). In conjunction with the 436 part profile, this is how all of the matches are
delivered.
eHarmony's research methods and its models for compatibility matching have not been submitted to any peer-reviewed journals for
evaluation and publication. However, eHarmony's research director, Steve Carter, PhD. presented a paper at the 16th annual
American Psychological Society (APS) meeting in 2004. In the paper presented, Carter compared eHarmony couples married for
more than 5 years with a control group, using the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS), a measure of couple satisfaction. The results
showed higher levels of satisfaction using this measurement. However, eHarmony's selection of a model for statistically choosing the
factors to be included in their questionnaires was made using couples who scored in the top quartile of the DAS measure. The use of
the DAS to measure outcomes presents a methodological flaw in establishing validity (psychometric), because the DAS is not
independent of eHarmony's models. Using an independent measure of satisfaction would be more convincing.
Steve Carter, PhD. also published an article in the APS Observer (The newsletter of the APS), which was criticised by APS readers
as an advertisement for the service, without any scientific merit. Other readers pointed out that eHarmony has never published data on
how many of their matches do not result in satisfactory marriages, which makes it difficult to evaluate the service's relative value. In
addition, eHarmony has been criticized for its exclusion of non-heterosexual couples in its services.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EHarmony