What is it about?
We developed a new instrument, the Online Relationship Initiation Scale (ORIS), to measure a previously unmeasured human behavior - the individual's perception of their efforts to form new personal relationships. Here, we were interested in how people use information technology to form new friendships, romances, and sexual relationships. In addition to rigorously testing the ORIS as a valid scale, we found interesting differences between women and men in how much they try to make new relationships online (men try harder but women are more successful), and associations with other factors such as willingness to cheat on a partner.
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Why is it important?
The ORIS demonstrated strong properties as a valid scale. The ORIS can provide reliable evidence of increasingly popular and important online interpersonal behaviors. Further research with this instrument may help shed light on other interpersonal behaviors and associations. The ORIS was recently used in Seward and Harris's (2016) study, finding ORIS scores were related to young adults going online for help with their suicidality.
Perspectives
The ORIS demonstrated very sound psychometric properties. That was a necessary hurdle to clear. The next step will be to see where this construct is or is not relevant. What can online relationship development efforts teach us about modern humans, their wants and needs?
Dr Keith M. Harris
University of Tasmania
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Online Friendship, Romance, and Sex: Properties and Associations of the Online Relationship Initiation Scale, Cyberpsychology Behavior and Social Networking, August 2016, Mary Ann Liebert Inc,
DOI: 10.1089/cyber.2016.0164.
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