The Connecting with your Partner Study

Are you..

  • In a romantic relationship?
  • At least 18 years old?
  • Interested in using an app to connect with your partner?

Researchers at the University of Rochester are looking for couples to try a smartphone app. The Agapé app helps couples connect by having both partners respond to daily questions (“What is one of your favorite things about your partner?”) and then sharing responses with both partners.

Individuals completing the final 1-month assessment in this study will have a chance (roughly 1 in 500) of winning $500! (Official Rules)

The Movies & Relationships Study

Are you...

  • at least 18 years old? 
  • in a relationship?
  • interested in using movies to re-invest into your relationship?

Researchers at the University of Rochester are looking for couples to try an activity (Promoting Awareness & Improving Relationships, PAIR) that helps couples think about their relationships by watching popular movies together and having discussions about them.

The Movies & Relationships Study is completely voluntary and involves…

  • Using online interactive tools
  • Completing a short (20-25min) relationship survey
    • Giving you individualized feedback on 5 areas of relationship functioning
  • Watching roughly 5 movies together over a month
    • Having 30-45min discussions at the end of each movie
  • Completing optional 1, 6, and 12-month follow up surveys

The MindFlex Assessment Project

Are you seeing clients using ACT or Mindfulness-based interventions?

Clinical psychology researchers at the University of Rochester are looking for people to participate in a project developing an online service that uses a new scale (the MPFI; Rolffs, Rogge, & Wilson, 2016) to generate multidimensional psychological flexibility & inflexibility profiles for clients.

Projects Currently Under Analysis

Having collected data from over 50,000 online subjects across 30+ studies, we currently have multiple studies underway in the lab. However, most of them are in the data analysis stage as we work to run the planned analyses and publish papers out of them.

 

The remaining sections of this page outline a few of those studies to give you a sense of what is going on in our lab.

 

The Finding Partners Study

This is a  cross-sectional survey examining partner seeking in the 21st century. It assessed a wide range of partner seeking:

  • going to bars/clubs
  • social acitivies with friends
  • dating websites
  • geo-social networking apps like Tinder and Grindr

The study assessed:

  • motives for partner seeking
  • sexual risk-taking
  • heavy drinking and drug use
  • wellbeing and psychological distress
  • background factors that might influence these behaviors

The Finding Pleasure in Sex Survey

In this study we collected a sample of 213 couples and had them complete an array of measures on their relationships including:

  • frequency of specific sexual activities
  • consistency of achieving orgasms from specific activities
  • partner's sexual responsiveness
  • attitudes toward relationships and toward sex
  • a number of relevant background factors

The study collected 6-month follow-up data and so we are currently running analyses to examine the dyadic importance of orgasms in relationships.

The Mindfulness in Life Study

In this study we recruited 2,385 online respondents and had them complete measures of:

  • mindfulness (MAAS, FFMQ)
  • psychological inflexibility (AAQ-II, CompACT)
  • psychological flexibility (MPFI)
  • wellbeing
  • psychological distress

The study collected 4-month follow-up data and so we are currently running analyses to examine longitudinal links between psychological flexibility and wellbeing.