eharmony .com

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eHarmony is a marriage-oriented matchmaking website. The company does a great deal of advertising through television and the internet and requires users to complete a detailed compatibility questionnaire. eHarmony was co-founded by Dr. Neil Clark Warren and his son-in-law, former commercial real estate developer Greg Forgatch. Forgatch is eHarmony's CEO and President, while Warren is its Chairman of the Board. Dr. Warren's wife, Marylyn, handles eHarmony's public relations. eHarmony's services are selective, that is, not all who apply for the service are accepted.

eHarmony was founded in 2000 with $3 million of Series A funding from Fayez Sarofim & Co. and individual investors. Dr. Warren, an evangelical Christian with strong ties to the conservative Christian community, attributes much the initial success of eHarmony to its being promoted through James Dobson's Focus on the Family radio show. After having been closely associated with Focus on the Family for four years, in 2005 eHarmony sought to distance itself from the group and Dobson, largely in an effort to broaden the market share of Warren's books and that of eHarmony according to Warren. After Warren publicly distanced himself from Focus on the Family and purchased back the copyright from his earlier books from the organization, Dobson told his radio audience on 26 May 2005, "I introduced Dr. Warren and his books — and eHarmony, more recently — to our listeners specifically because he was and it was decidedly Christian in nature," ... "Dr. Warren is anxious to change that direction. So ... we will go our separate ways ... with reluctance and regret." The services offered by eHarmony are consistent with the values of Conservative Christianity. For example, eHarmony does not offer services to those seeking same-sex partners.

In 2004 eHarmony received the fourth largest venture capital investment of that year from two California-based companies, Sequoia Capital and Technology Crossover Ventures (Lee, 2004). The investment of $110 million is expected to fund eHarmony's branding process, which includes heavy advertising, and also to provide cash payments to the founders and 114 other individuals associated with the company (Rivlin, 2005).

eHarmony's services are geared toward those looking for a long term relationship, which is estimated to be 20% of those using online dating services. Dr. Warren's goal is to reduce the divorce rate in America to less than 10% (it is estimated to be 40-50%).

The company boasts to be the internet's number one paid matchmaking service based upon marriages per match. It has rather strict limitations, which Dr. Warren states are solely based on over 35 years of research into successful marriages. Factors "which may limit a user from experiencing eHarmony's matchmaking service to the fullest" include: still being married, 3 or more previous failed marriages resulting in divorce, severe depression and being under the age of 21. These users are immediately disqualified with extended support from the complete profile. eHarmony still extends their community forum, newsletters and customer care to these registrants.

Dr. Warren claims eHarmony lacks enough data to successfully match gay and lesbian couples and he lists same-sex marriage as being illegal in most states and eHarmony "don't really want to participate in something that's illegal." Dr. Warren further claims he hopes that homosexuals will find good matches, and claims to have assisted entrepreneurs looking to build a same-sex site similar to eHarmony.

Barring disqualification from the above mentioned criteria, a user who completes an initial personality analysis survey (essentially a personality test developed by Dr. Galen Buckwalter, Director of Research at eHarmony) may then specify a number of additional criteria, "self selects" by which to create a more accurate potential pool of recommended matches. Among the criteria available for the user's specificity are self selected age range, ethnicity, religious affiliation, geographical vicinity, marital (previous) status (single/divorced/widowed), and maternity/paternity status (children living with/children living away/no children). In conjunction with the 436 part profile, this is how all of the matches are delivered. One significant scoring factor is what may be called the honesty factor. This is a psychological profiling technique designed to score the relative honesty of the respondent. This factor is apparently considered by eHarmony as a significant factor in arriving at a good match. Contrary to many other matchmaking services, the user is not allowed to browse through profiles or choose potential matches themselves, and must rely completely on the eHarmony service itself to arrange potential matches. Some people consider this a positive, as it prevents people from 'making the same mistakes' they have made previously when selecting potential dates.

It should also be noted that the sheer number of questions may affect who uses eHarmony. It takes a significant amount of time to answer all the questions. Some believe that this discourages the less serious. Others believe that it discourages people with limited time.

eHarmony states that 20%, or 1 in 5 respondents are not able to predict with whom the user would best be matched.

eHarmony's research methods and its models for compatibility matching have not been submitted to any peer-reviewed journals for evaluation and publication. However, eHarmony's research director, Dr. (PhD) Steve Carter did present a paper at the 2004, 16th annual American Psychological Society (APS) meeting. In the paper presented, Carter compared eHarmony couples married for more than 5 years with a control group, using the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS), a measure of couple satisfaction. The results showed that "Over 90% of eHarmony couples had marriage quality scores which were above average when compared to couples who had begun their relationships elsewhere. eHarmony couples were more than twice as likely to be in highly successful marriages than non-eHarmony couples... Not only are eHarmony couples 35% more likely than other married couples to report that they enjoy spending time together, but we found they are nearly twice as likely to report that their marriages are "extremely happy" or better versus other recently married couples."

eHarmony's selection of a model for statistically choosing the factors to be included in their questionnaires was made using couples who scored in the top quartile of the DAS measure. The use of the DAS to measure outcomes may present a methodological flaw in establishing validity, because the DAS is not independent of eHarmony's models. Using an independent measure of satisfaction would be more convincing. However, eHarmony appears to be the only "matching" service (True.com, PerfectMatch.com, Cybersuitors.com, etc.) online that has actually conducted either predictive or post hoc research using married couples to create or validate their methods. In fact, this use of empirical data from married couples to create a system for matching singles online is the core of eHarmony's patent (U.S. Patent No. 6,735,568).

Steve Carter also published a column in the APS Observer (the newsletter of the APS), about what it is like to work at eHarmony. This was criticized by some APS readers as an advertisement for the service, without any scientific merit. Other readers pointed out that eHarmony has never published data on how many of their matches do not result in satisfactory marriages, which makes it difficult to evaluate the service's relative value. eHarmony's selection of a model for statistically choosing the factors to be included in their questionnaires was made using couples who scored in the top quartile of the DAS measure. The use of the DAS to measure outcomes may present a methodological flaw in establishing validity, because the DAS is not independent of eHarmony's models. Using an independent measure of satisfaction would be more convincing. However, eHarmony appears to be the only "matching" service (True.com, PerfectMatch.com, Cybersuitors.com, etc.) online that has actually conducted either predictive or post hoc research using married couples to create or validate their methods. In fact, this use of empirical data from married couples to create a system for matching singles online is the core of eHarmony's patent (U.S. Patent No. 6,735,568).