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eHarmony

Published by Zeeshsoft | October 9th 2009 | Views:

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eHarmony is a marriage-orientedmatchmaking website. The company does a great deal of advertisingthrough television and the internet and requires users to complete adetailed compatibility questionaire. eHarmony was founded by Dr. NeilClark Warren. eHarmony's services are selective, not all who apply forthe service are accepted.

Dr. Warren, an evangelical Christian, has been closely associated withFocus on the Family and its founder, Dr. James Dobson. Dr. Warrenattributes much the initial success of eHarmony to its being promotedthrough the Focus on the Family radio show, though the twoorganizations have since parted ways, largely in an effort to broadenthe market share of Warren's books and that of eHarmony. In keepingwith Warren's evangelical background and focus, eHarmony does not offerservices to those seeking same-sex partners.

eHarmony prides itself in success in creating lasting matches among itsparticipants. On the home page of its website, it prominently displayspictures of couples who met and either became engaged or married. Italso allows couples who became involved via eHarmony to registerthrough their "success stories" department for an opportunity to win acruise in a drawing.

Methodology

eHarmony boasts to be the internet's number one paid matchmakingservice based upon marriages per match. It has rather strictlimitations which Dr. Warren states are solely based on over 35 yearsof research into successful marrification from the above mentioned criteria, a user whocompletes an initial personality analysis survey (essentially apersonality assessment inventory-type of test) may then specify anumber of additional criteria, "self selects" by which to create a moreaccurate potential pool of recommended matches. Among the criteriaavailable for the user's specificity are self selected age range,ethnicity, religious affiliation, geographical vicinity, marital(previous) status (single/divorced/widowed), and maternity/paternitystatus (children living with/children living away/no children). Inconjunction with the 436 part profile, this is how all of the matchesare delivered.

eHarmony's research methods and its models for compatibility matchinghave not been submitted to any peer-reviewed journals for evaluationand publication. However, eHarmony's research director, Steve Carter,PhD. presented a paper at the 16th annual American PsychologicalSociety (APS) meeting in 2004. In the paper presented, Carter comparedeHarmony couples married for more than 5 years with a control group,using the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS), a measure of couplesatisfaction. The results showed higher levels of satisfaction usingthis measurement. However, eHarmony's selection of a model forstatistically choosing the factors to be included in theirquestionnaires was made using couples who scored in the top quartile ofthe DAS measure. The use of the DAS to measure outcomes presents amethodological flaw in establishing validity (psychometric), becausethe DAS is not independent of eHarmony's models. Using an independentmeasure of satisfaction would be more convincing.

Steve Carter, PhD. also published an article in the APS Observer (Thenewsletter of the APS), which was criticised by APS readers as anadvertisement for the service, without any scientific merit. Otherreaders pointed out that eHarmony has never published data on how manyof their matches do not result in satisfactory marriages, which makesit difficult to evaluate the service's relative value. In addition,eHarmony has been criticized for its exclusion of non-heterosexualcouples in its services.


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