The three variables being studied are: gender as the independent variable, using the internet to find partners is acceptable as the dependent variable, and the age the participant started using the Internet as the control variable.
The ways these three variables are conceptualized are:
1) Gender - a social construction; it is the category with which you identify
Because of this factor the way we chose to operationalize this is to leave an opinion box open to allow for all types of identities rather than limiting to male or female.
2) Using in the internet to find partners is acceptable – the terms “to find partners” is meaning to seek a romantic connection leading to a relationship on the internet by means of chat rooms, social networking sites, common interest, etc.
The way this is operationalized is by asking a closed ended question within the survey. The answers include yes, no, and I don’t know.
3) When you started using the Internet – the age you began engaging with and experiencing the Internet.
A matrix within the survey was used to operationalize this. The age categories chosen to represent this were <10, 10-14, and 15-19. These were seen as appropriate due to the age of the students within the class.
Univariate Statistics
The frequency produced for the variable gender shows that 68.9% of the survey participants identified themselves as female and 31.1% identified themselves as male. This is was determined after collapsing previous groups that coincided with these two options.
In the case of the dependent variable, the frequency displays 58.7% of the participants agreed that using the Internet to find a partner is acceptable, 17.5 percent disagreed with this, and 23.8% of participants were neutral to this notion. This suggesting that the highest amount of people think that it is acceptable to use the Internet to find a partner.
The frequency table for question nine, which age you started using the Internet, shows the largest number of participants, 60.3%, began using the Internet between the ages of 10-14.The second largest category was <10 years of age (33.3%), and the third was 15-19 years of age, this was represented by 6.3% of the participants.
Bivariate Statistics
After running a crosstabulation based on the findings from this survey, male participants were more likely than female participants to agree that using the Internet to find partners is acceptable. The majority of the male sample (78.9%) agreed with this. A smaller percentage of female participants (47.6%) declared that they did not agree.
Trivariate Statistics