Speed-Dating for Adults with ASD (UCLA study)

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Are you interested in participating in a speed-dating event with adults with autism who are romantically interested in opposite-gendered partners?

A speed-dating study with adults with autism (18-30 yrs.) is being conducted at UCLA. The purpose of this study is to examine what characteristics adults with autism find attractive in others and how they use that information to choose relationship partners. As part of the study, you will have the opportunity to go on 10-12 mini-dates with adults with autism of the opposite gender. After each mini-date you will indicate if you are interested in getting to know your date partner better through exchanging email addresses. If each date partner indicates interest in getting to know his/her partner better, then it is a “match.” You will receive an email with the first name and email address of each of your matches within one week of the speed-dating event.

The length of time you will be involved with this study is approximately 4 hours. In order to participate in the event, you must complete an initial online survey that will take approximately 1 hour. The speed-dating event will last approximately 2 hours (at UCLA) and the post-event questionnaires, completed online over a period of 4 weeks, will take approximately 1 hour.

If you are interested in the study, please contact Siena Whitham (I'm not able to post my email address since I am a new member, but you can PM me if you are interested!)

This sounds really awesome but I'm somewhat hesitant about trying it. Mostly nervous. Any other LA Aspies thinking of trying?

I know it might be a slightly nerve-racking thing to try, but we are hoping to make it as comfortable/fun as possible! So far we have 4 Aspies signed up and we need 20 in order to host the first event.

I can remember when I was 18 years old and someone who was twenty-two seemed really older, and someone who was twenty-nine or thirty almost seemed ancient.

Grouping this age bracket together, and I wish people all the best and maybe someone who is nineteen will really hit it off with someone who is twenty-eight, but all the same, this kind of seems yet another example of viewing the Spectrum from the outside looking in.

So, it's a speed dating event which lasts approximately two hours and that is the ten to twelve mini-dates? And that might well be it, or with mutual interest, a person may receive a later email. I think this part needs to be made clearer.

And I'm guessing the surveys are questions of the sort, How appealing do you find confidence on a scale from 1 to 7? And then different statistics can be run.

And at the end of the rainbow, it's presenting skills in an academic, left-brain manner, when instead . . .

You might have a resource center where you do much of the leg work of helping people get jobs, and not just crummy jobs at that.

You could respectfully and realistically coach people on social skills and relationship situations.

Etc.

And this resource center could have major leadership roles of people who are themselves on the Spectrum, and in short order be entirely member lead, with maybe a little bit of professional help and coaching from the outside.

Okay, I'm sure the study has been approved by a human subjects review board, but often that can be a one-shot, clunky decision.

For example, finding the right entrance, right parking lot, and the right building at a new university often can be a big deal. Even people who are entirely neurotypical sometimes struggle with this. And if UCLA is anything like UH, there is a realistic concern with crime, and students might know which parking lots are somewhat less safe at certain times of the day, but newcomers might not.

And I'd say one solution is to make the directions with zen mindfulness and please make sure it's written well by someone who really knows the area. I've had directions like 'Right at first major intersection,' and it's just plain mistaken.

So, it's not adding more steps to the directions as if we're dummies. I personally might enjoy the three major steps of the directions and leave it at that. But then again, I'm a story / narrative type of Aspie, as opposed to an abstract thinker or a visual thinker.

I hope you can accept all of this and the above as constructive criticism. Perhaps you could briefly dialogue either per email or phone with study participants regarding what directions are helpful.

Speed dating for people with autism? I'm pretty sure speed dating is socially demanding and confusing enough for people without autism!

It won't matter if they hold it in a library.

no one is talking under that pressure apart from the meltdowns and crazy stimming going on

It does sound like an interesting study. I'm not in the country though.

One issue I would have is, I would need to make clear what type of relationship would be viable. I would have to be upfront about his becuase it wouldn't be fair otherwise. This would be challenging for speed dating.

I could write a thesis on your premiss though

As social experience exercise it would be interesting, but not quite the motivation for the study.

Dating other aspies has never worked out for me, so I wouldn't expect anything from it. I would take part in this just to study it myself. I can imagine the room would reek with awkwardness.

I would like to try, but I'm married. I don't think I would be allowed. LOL