A plea for volunteers from couples

[lathany]

Would you be happy to be interviewed by me as part of my Economics course project (my final assignment)?

I'm after couples¹ who both agree to be interviewed by me. I'd prefer to do this face-to-face, but would also accept various other forms of communication as I'm short on people to interview.

My project is on whether game theory can be used to describe the decision making processes of couples under neo-classical (ie. traditional) economic theories. The interviews will be asking about you and your relationship (essentially to identify it in terms of length, religion, etc) and then putting a number of scenarios (variations on the same scenario) to you and asking what you would do. I'm primarily interested in what factors you would take into account as it's decision making rather than outcome that I'm looking at.

Whilst the tutor at summer school was talking about interviews taking 60-90 minutes (this was to my whole group), I'm expecting these to be less than that, but I'll have a better idea after I run my guinea pig (aka bateleur) through my questions this evening.

Names will not be used, the whole thing will be anonymous. As it's an OU essay it won't be published anywhere either.

If you would consider taking part please either drop a comment here saying so or send me an email (the one on my user page will work if nothing else). Feel free to ask further questions, etc.

---

¹ Two people involved in a romantic relationship for any length of time.

Comments

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

If T agrees then I'd be happy to, although f-t-f probably wouldn't be achievable on any reaonably timescale.

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

borusa and I are willing. It would be nice to see you!

[triskellian]

I'm willing if smiorgan is.

[quisalan.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't mind, although I'd need to ask R, and timing might be problematic.

The interesting thing is that this is self-selecting in itself; couples who are likely to have screaming arguments or make decisions in an unusual way are unlikely to volunteer...

[elethiomel.livejournal.com]

Haven't checked with the Senior Management yet, but I'm pretty sure Shayna and I would be happy to take part.

[huggyrei.livejournal.com]

I think H and I are happy to do this, and we're coming over in a few weeks at least?

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

this is self-selecting

In fact, part one of the experiment is underway - couples are being classified into those in which it's OK for one half to announce "yeah, sure, I'm up for it if the other one is", and couples who discuss it privately before making public announcements :-)

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

One comment I've made to lathany is that she'll have to be very careful responding to comments on this thread not to bias any of the participants with comments she might make.

But since I haven't yet participated in the experiment I can quite happily point out that yours is exactly the kind of comment she shouldn't be responding to! ;-P

[dracunculus.livejournal.com]

There's also couples like me, wherein one half feels perfectly comfortable in volunteering the other half before discussing it at all.

I'm positive Sam wouldn't mind participating.

[dracunculus.livejournal.com]

"Couples like the one I'm in" would be a more grammatical way of phrasing that I guess.

[dr-bob.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a good excuse for a visit!!

[dracunculus.livejournal.com]

Face to face won't be possible I think, but if you get desperate you can do Sam and me over e-mail...

[leathellin.livejournal.com]

We'd be happy to help, we are obviously a bit out of the reach of real face to face interview but clever things can be done with VOIP and webcams.

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

alextfish and I would be up for this, although we probably couldn't do f2f because we're in Cambridge and fairly short of time.