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This response submitted by Chris (ChrisM@muohio.edu) at 8:46 am on 2/21/01. Additions were last made on Monday, November 4, 2002. Section: .

I think you've found a well-defined topic. The trick will be to have enough control in the study to reasonably rule out the many factors that will influence how people rate beauty.

For example, make sure the survey doesn't confuse attractiveness in different contexts (friendship, one-night-stand, long-term romantic, marriage).

For the attractiveness photo, I'd use copies of only one male and one female--unless you have specific ideas about different attractive people and that is one of the things your testing. Does it make sense to also use "plain" or "unattractive" photos for this study?

Use the "family" of survey questions approach, and think if there are any other ways to gather data that might help test your predictions.

In intro, separate your predictions by gender, since you might expect men and women to be targeting different traits.

Nice start,

Chris


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