A Comparison of Courtship Behaviors of Two Generations of HBCU Male Students in Georgia

The research was funded through the Center for Undergraduate Research at Albany State University. Abstract This paper is the completion of a replication of an earlier project which contributes to research on families, specifically courtship behaviors, attitudes, and strategies by young men of color in dating and searching for a life partner. Prior research indicates that males select female partners on physical attractiveness, and sex role socialization. Data collection via SurveyMonkey obtained 68 respondents, and a final sample size of 56 after filtering via four screening measures. The adjusted sample size of 48 participants ensured that all of those in the sample identified as single, heterosexual, Black/African American males. Data obtained is compared to data from 1948 with a similar population. Preliminary results indicate that the top two reasons for dating are companionship and finding a suitable life partner/mate. Spearman’s rho correlation indicated several statistically significant monotonic relationships between the “Appropriate Behavior in Courtship” statements. Limitations include validity/reliability of the measure of “courtship behaviors” statements as it was not created as a scale, and items were unable to be reverse coded due to a lack of additional information from the original study. Keywords: courtship, dating, marriage, Historically Black Colleges & Universities, African American Males DOI: 10.7176/RHSS/10-4-14 Publication date: February 29th 202