A World Wide Web-Based Research Project

Abstract

The World Wide Web (Web) is a good source of data for class projects. In this article, I review a Web-based experimental psychology research project examining human mate preferences. Designed as a conceptual replication of Hayes's (1995) study of newspaper personal advertisements, students collected information from Internet personal advertisements to provide support for or against evolutionary (Buss, 1985) and social learning theories (Hayes) of mate selection. Students collected information from 4 personal advertisement categories: men seeking women, women seeking men, women seeking women, and men seeking men. I summarized and returned the data to students who wrote an American Psychological Association style paper on mate selection. I also review the advantages and disadvantages of using the Internet.