“The realistic view might not provide what the company wants,” she said, “however it’s my responsibility to do so and provide data that is accurate.”
It is unclear whether the surveys sampled similar and representative demographics, a fact
that Jennifer Lundquist, a sociologist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst who researches online dating, said indicated that more studies were needed to determine if Tinder’s surveys were accurate.
“You are able to have a visual idea of the pool in front of you, whereas the people
who aren’t dating online are simply speculating as to what the pool may be like.”
The report looked at a survey administered via the app to 7,072 Tinder users, ages 18 to 36,
and a second survey of 2,502 offline daters, ages 18 to 35, conducted by Morar Consulting.
“One issue with the non-online dating comparison group is
that given how normalized and destigmatized online dating has become for this age group, it’s unusual not to participate in online dating,” Professor Lundquist said.
(The offline daters fell into three groups: people who have never dated online, people who had dated online in the past
but no longer did, and people who had never used online dating but were open to the possibility.)
As a result, she said, the offline daters “may be a weirdly skewed group, or as sociologists would say negatively select.”
Professor Lundquist also questioned the motivations for the survey, pointing to the anecdotal belief among many daters
that Tinder’s picture-based feature leads it to be a “hookup” app rather than a mechanism for finding long-term partners.