Rural men sought to help with Otago University research on dating

University of Otago student Sophie Dix is researching the dating habits of rural men for her master’s thesis. Photo / Shawn McAvinue / ODT

University of Otago student Sophie Dix is calling for young rural men to tell her about their dating habits.

Dix (22), of Warepa, in South Otago, studies sociology. For her master’s thesis, she was researching the perceptions of rural men, aged between 18 and 30, on dating.

“I want to understand how rural life affects dating and relationships,” she said.

One motivation to write a 40,000-word thesis was a lack of research on the subject.

Research on dating primarily focused on people living in urban areas.

“I think it’s really important we get to hear these rural perspectives more.”

The men could live anywhere in New Zealand but must have been raised or are living in a rural area, and did not have to be farmers.

She was interested in hearing from men who had experienced the dating scene in rural and urban areas to discover if there were any perceived differences.

She needed to interview 12 men.

Questions asked included how often they dated, how they found the experience and if they used online dating applications, such as Tinder.

All information was confidential so she was limited to what she could reveal, including if any of the interviewees were from the South.

Finding men to participate had been hard, Dix said.

A reason might be some rural men struggled to share their feelings and talk about themselves.

The interviews usually took about 40 minutes and could be done by video conferencing or in person.

Participants would be given a supermarket voucher in return.

Anyone interested could email rural.study@otago.ac.nz for further information.