R ELATIONSHIPS A survey by Julia Dykers, Rachel Rhodes, Stephanie Canada, Dzoara Del Toro, Julie Manners, Sarah Anderson, and Bethany Park.

P URPOSE & H YPOTHESES Build a greater understanding of relationships at Western Washington University Develop an understanding of how WWU students think about & classify their relationships Find correlations between extracurricular involvement, leisure time activities, romantic satisfaction, and relationship status Explore the role of religion in dating

S URVEY Q UESTIONS Common information (i.e. age, sex, sexual orientation, year in school, major, credits/work hours, etc.) Leisure time Relationship status/definition Satisfaction level Religious affiliation

S AMPLE & D ATA COLLECTION 174 WWU students Varying locations Viking Commons Rec Center Dorms Red Square Viking Union Fairhaven Library Asked random people passing by

O PEN ENDED QUESTIONS 1. “How do you feel religion plays a role in your relationship decisions?” 2. “How do you feel about dating in Bellingham?” Interesting responses/trends Problems with open-ended questions Students not always interested in answering fully (time constraints?) Maybe Question # 2 could have been phrased “How do you feel about dating at Western ?” Questions we could have asked E.g. “if YES [“in a relationship”], how would you describe your relationship?” If NO [“single”] “What potential difficulties do you see in attempting to date someone at Western?”

FINDINGS Out of 174 respondents, 80 described themselves as “being in a relationship” and 94 described themselves as “not in a relationship”. Out of 79 male respondents, 43% identified themselves within a relationship; out of 95 female respondents, 48% said the same.

Out of 47 self-identified religious survey respondents, 33 said that religion played a role in their relationship decisions.

Out of 80 people who answered YES to “being in a relationship”, 62 described that relationship as “exclusive”, and 3 each for every other category.

12 out of 42 (or 28.6% ) freshman identified themselves as “being in a relationship”, while 21 out of 43 ( 48.8% ) sophomores, 31 out of 62 ( 50% ) juniors, 12 out of 23 ( 52.2% ) seniors, and 4 out of 4 ( 100% ) grad students said the same.

W HAT A RE S OME INFERENCES WE CAN DRAW FROM OUR SURVEY FINDINGS ?

RELIGION Most religious people allow their relationships to be influenced by their religious beliefs, for example they want their significant other to share the same religion because it’s an important thing to have in common. “…I’m going to wait for an adult male who has the same purpose in life as me, serving Jesus.” “As a Christian I feel I should only date Christians, it says so in the Bible. It would be silly not to because it would just lead to trouble/conflict later on.” “We are both Christians and that is one of the strongest things we have in common…” Religious beliefs also seemed to shape the sexual nature of relationships. “Decisions of who to have sex with and not being sexually promiscuous…” “[Religion] does determine how much sexual activity I’m willing to do.”

M ORE INFERENCES There are some possible inferences which we can draw from the data that was gathered. One inference that can be made on why most of the relationships are described as “exclusive (dating only one person)” is that… Individuals are actually most happy with one, monogamous relationship, whereas, a polyandrous relationship could be less satisfying and more stressful. An inference behind why more freshman are not in relationships could possibly be that… They are transitioning into “college life” so developing a serious relationship may not be a top priority. Some new freshman could still be in past relationships with individuals from high school and may still be trying to maintain those.

C ORRELATION MISCONCEPTIONS We had some reflective questions about just how reliable our survey results are… How could we have avoided surveying disproportionate amounts of students in each class level? We surveyed… Freshman Sophomore Junior Senior Graduate Is it possible that the dual categories “in a relationship” and “not in a relationship” are not enough to fully describe the spectrum of different stages of college romances? Is it possible that our choices for leisure time activities were not enough?