This document summarizes a research study examining the relationship between texting frequency and relational intimacy in romantic relationships. The study surveyed 120 college students in relationships lasting 3+ months. It found a positive correlation between how often a couple texts and their level of relational intimacy, as measured by a shortened version of the Miller Social Intimacy Scale. Limitations included a small convenience sample size and scales with less than ideal reliability. Improving the measurement scales and obtaining a larger random sample were recommended for future research. The findings suggest increased communication via texting, as one form of communication common among college students, can positively impact relationship closeness.

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Texting and Relational Intimacy: The Effects of How a Couple Chooses to Interact
Dr. Arroyo
COMM 3700
Rachel Harris, Michael Gilliard, Haley Hodoval and Sloane Shuler

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Method Section
I. Participants and ResearchDesign
After completing our data collection, we analyzed our data to determine the makeup of
our research participants. The class’s overall sample was 388 people; however, due to the
requirements to answer our portion of the survey, our data is focused on a sample size of 120
people. These people met the criteria about their romantic relationship, having been in a romantic
relationship for 3 months or longer, to answer our pre-determined questions.
The makeup of these 120 participants was 69.2% female and 30.8% male. Their
average age was 20.08 years old with a standard deviation of 3.04. We had a variety of responses
for “Year at UGA” with 7.5% first years, 16.7% second years, 23.3% third years, 35.8% fourth
years, 10.0% fifth years, and 6.7% were in graduate/professional school. The mean Body Mass
Index (BMI) was 23.08 with a standard deviation of 3.73. The mean Grade Point Average (GPA)
was 3.44 with a standard deviation of 0.36. Lastly, the ethnicity of our research participants was
85.8% White/Caucasian, 4.2% Black/African American, 2.5% Latino/Hispanic, 5.0%
Asian/Asian American, and 1.9% identified as Other.
II. Independent Variable
Our independent variable is the frequency one spends texting their significant other.
We created a series of five questions to ask our participants about their texting habits related to
their romantic partner. To answer these five questions, the participant must meet our pre-
determined criteria. One must have answered “yes” to “Are you in a relationship?” and “3 or
more months” to “How many months have you been in this relationship?” We used a likert-type
scale to create our quantitative research study questions with our five items evaluated on a 5-

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point scale (1= Very Rarely, 3=some of the time, 5=Almost Always). The scale is considered
reliable if the Cronbach’s alpha is greater than or equal to 0.70. However, after removing four
out of five questions, only one of ours erred on the side of reliable which was “How often do you
send him or her texts throughout the day?” Since we only used this one question to measure our
independent variable, we did not have an alpha. However, we calculated a mean of 3.98 with a
standard deviation of .90.
III. Dependent Variable
Our dependent variable was relational intimacy between two romantic partners and we
used six items from The Miller Social Intimacy Scale to include in our survey. The six questions
were evaluated on a 5-point scale (1= Very Rarely, 3=some of the time, 5=Almost Always). A
participant with high relational intimacy between themselves and their partner would answer all
of these questions with a number in the “Almost Always” range. However, one question (“How
often do you keep very personal information to yourself and not share it with him/her?”) on our
scale was not worded in the same manner – by answering the question in the “Very Rarely”
range would mean a higher relational intimacy. For this question in particular, we realigned the
numerical values to improve our Cronbach’s alpha to .67. Our Cronbach’s alpha was close to .70
so we consider our responses surrounding relational intimacy to be fairly reliable. We calculated
a mean of 4.13 with a standard deviation of .44. The responses ranged from 3-5 and since the
average was 4.13, this leads us to believe that most people were satisfied. Because of this data,
we believe we accurately measured the kind of information we were intending to measure,
making our dependent variable valid.

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IV. Procedures
To collect data from participants, each person in our class asked 10 friends that
attended the University of Georgia to complete the survey. We consider this convenience
sampling because asking our friends was easier to access than getting random people on campus
to complete our survey. We collected data for two weeks, which ultimately resulted in 120
completing our portion of the survey.
The order of events is as follows: First, we created questions about texting frequency to use in
our survey along with using a portion of questions from The Miller Social Intimacy Scale. After
we figured out the questions we wanted, we submitted them to Dr. Arroyo. She created a survey
with each group’s questions and then each person in their group asked 10 or more friends that
attended the University of Georgia to complete the survey in the next two weeks (October 26,
2015 – November 6, 2015), ultimately resulting in 120 responses.
Results Section
Our hypothesis, “as the frequency a couple communicates via text messaging increases, their
relational intimacy will also increase”, was supported by our research. We reached our results by
examining the responses from the 120 participants who filled out our portion of the class survey,
and then calculating the alpha, mean, and standard variation for each variable, and then the r
statistic and the p-value.

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Univariate Analyses
The first variable examined in our study is relational intimacy. The Cronbach’s alpha for
relational intimacy was 0.67. This alpha is < 0.70, which shows that the reliability of this
variable is .03 less than we hoped it to be, but still satisfactory. A reason for this weakened
reliability is that the scale used to measure relational intimacy was originally a 13-question
survey, which we had to shorten to six questions. The mean response to this variable was 4.128
and the standard deviation was 0.438.
The second variable examined in our study is text messaging. For this variable, there was no
Cronbach’s alpha. Instead, this variable was examined using the responses from one question.
This question was “how often do you send him/her texts throughout the day?” We were forced to
use only one question out of the five we presented because of the lack of reliability from the
scale. The mean response to this variable was 3.98 which is somewhere between the responses
“sometimes” and “almost always”. The standard deviation was .90.
Bivariate Analyses
The r statistic, the number that shows how well the data fits into our statistical model, was 0.35.
The p-value, the number that helps determine the significance of our results, was 0.00. Since our
p-value < 0.05, we know that there is strong evidence against the null hypothesis, therefore we
can reject it. The r statistic and p-value are very significant to our study because they show that
there is a positive relationship between texting and relational intimacy, such that as texting
increases, relational intimacy increases (r=.35; p=.000).

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Discussion Section:
In our research our hypothesis stated that as communication between couples via text
messaging increases, the relational intimacy felt between them would also increase. This means
that the more a couple texts, the closer they feel to each other. Our findings support our
hypothesis, which means that among college students at The University of Georgia, the amount
of texting that occurs between couples is tied in a positive relationship to that couple’s relational
intimacy. These findings are important because many students on campus are in or seeking a
romantic relationship but with the stresses of college many students find it hard to maintain a
close relationship with their partner. Texting thus serves as a way to help maintain relational
intimacy during this time. This also means that although face-to-face communication is key in
any relationship, texting constantly to one’s significant other does not hinder the feeling of
relational intimacy.
Other research has supported that texting and relational intimacy are also locked in a
positive relationship. Texting is one of the most frequent forms of communication between
college students and helps provide a basis for a secure relationship (Drouin, 2012). It makes
sense that the more one discloses with a partner the closer they will feel with that person and
texting is a way to continually give information about yourself to one’s partner as well as inquire
about that partner and make them feel valued. Because texting is so widely used by college
students, many know how to perceive a text, thus allowing this form of communication to be an
effective one for relationships. (Jin, 2013).
It should be noted that our research did have some limitations. One important one is that
we cannot generalize beyond our sampling frame as we only studied students at the University of
Georgia who where in committed romantic relationships. Also we were dealing with humans in

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our research so accuracy would not be one hundred percent as humans are not accurate all the
time. The Cronbach’s alpha from the first variable, relational intimacy, was 0.67. This was a
limitation because it was less than 0.70. This shows that the reliability of this variable is .03 less
than we hoped it to be, but still satisfactory. A reason for this weakened reliability is that the
scale used to measure relational intimacy was originally a 13-question survey, which we had to
shorten to six questions. Another limitation we faced was not having an alpha for our second
variable, texting. A few of our survey questions about texting were phrased in a way that made
our subjects find it hard to consistently answer them. Therefore, we had to eliminate all of the
results from our texting survey, except for the responses from one question. The question we
used to analyze our texting variable was “how often do you send him/her texts throughout the
day?” We felt as if this question sufficiently encompassed what we needed to know about how
often intimate couples text one another.
If we were to conduct this study again we would try and get a larger, more random
sample size. This would allow us to have less bias in our results and cause our data to be more
reliable and valid. We would also use the full version of the Miller Social Intimacy Scale, instead
of using just six of the questions from it. This would also allow for more reliable results. Not
only would we modify our scale for intimacy, we would also change the questions for our texting
scale. We would make the questions more clear and direct in order to evaluate how often couples
use texting to communicate with one another. By making these changes, we believe that our
results will be more reliable and valid.
Our study was aimed to see how texting affected relationships, specifically the relational
intimacy felt between couples. We saw that increased texting did have a positive relationship
with relational intimacy and that this meant texting does help improve relational intimacy. For

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communications as a whole this is relevant because texting is such a prevalent form of
communication especially among undergraduate aged students in college and younger. This also
goes to support the idea that increased communication of any type will benefit a romantic
relationship.

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Works Cited
Drouin, M. (2012). Texting, sexting, and attachment in college students’ romantic relationships.
Computers to Human Behavior. 28(2), 444-449.
Jin, B. (2013). Hurtful texting in friendships: Satisfaction buffers the distancing effects of
intention. Communication Research Reports, 30(2), 148-156.
Hook, M. K., Gerstein, L. H., Detterich, L., & Gridley, B. (2003). How close are we? measuring
intimacy and examining gender differences. Journal of Counseling and Development:
JCD, 81(4), 462-472.