When it comes to information from the media, we are always being told a story.

“Men and

women come from different worlds!” In the face of research, how true is this though? Several

studies have been carried out to compare the behaviours and attitudes of men and women, the

results show that men and women are more similar than not (Miller, p22, 2012).

Media articles sometimes fail to capture the depth of research findings, exaggerate the findings,

over generalize or hyper focus on the intended area while research articles aim to test and

discover media articles aim to tell a story, in this paper I will be comparing an article about

intimate relationships and one of its cited research articles to evaluate whether it appropriately

conveys the results of the research.

Citing multiple research papers, the media article titled healthy high quality relationships matter

more than we think, goes over the importance of relationships- especially their quality, in

affecting our wellbeing. In respect to my chosen research article, social relations and life

satisfaction: the role of friends, the media article describes how the study found a link between

friendship individual satisfaction with life, it specified that the reason for this link was a result of

the quality of the relationship. The article also included the manner in which quality was

measured in the study; by the individual’s satisfaction with the relationship, intensity and

frequency of interaction (Edelmann, 2022).

The study itself is based on social capital, which can simply be defined as an individuals social

pool. It is a resource that the authors and many others are interested in observing its role in

peoples lives. With the use of multipurpose surveys that measured life satisfaction, the design

was a cross sectional study. There were questions that accounted for the frequency of interaction

with friends and their satisfaction levels within the past 12 months. The study also had control
variables, social integration and active lifestyle.

The results show that although gender had no effect on life satisfaction, older people tend to be

happier than younger people, education is also a significant factor, people with medium

education are more happy than people with higher education, people’s economic statuses also

had an effect, it seems people with jobs they enjoyed that also allowed them to have sufficient

economic resources tend to be happier than other people. The results also indicated that people

who live in couples were more satisfied with life than people living individually or in any other

living structure. The control measures (social integration and active lifestyle) had very

notable effects on total satisfaction. The more integrated a person is the more satisfied in life

they are, even participation in religious activities and at least moderate exercise, respectively,

have a noticeable effect on overall life satisfaction. Not surprisingly poorer health or limitations

resulted in lower life satisfaction. Personality traits seemed to also influence life satisfaction,

people who were more trusting and those with more positive attitudes were more likely to have

higher life satisfaction than those who do not these traits. Interestingly, those who live in the

north-west were more likely to be more satisfied with their life. Friendship relationships, the

frequency of visits were associated with higher life satisfaction as well.

The author’s interpreted the results to mean that having good quality friendships and meeting up

with friends are necessary and most indicative for overall life satisfaction.

Compared to the original research paper, the media paper represented the research in a

watered down manner. The article reduced the findings in the research paper to being about

mainly the quality of friendship and the effect that it has on life satisfaction, it also reduced the

measures used in the study, to centre only those that measured individual satisfaction within
friendship relationships as well as the frequency of interactions with friends. Which is a

significant cut from the scales evaluated during the study. However, since the researchers also

prioritized the link between friendship and life satisfaction, this cut from the article does not

really affect its credibility.

The article failed to include the studies result for the effects of living situations, job satisfaction,

economic resources, health issues, limitations, religious involvement, exercise, personality traits,

level of education, gender, and municipality (Amati et al, 2018). This makes sense given that the

article uses multiple articles to formulate their point on the importance of high quality

relationships. The article does cover one of the features the research paper did, specifically, the

involvement in the relationship (Edelmann, 2022).

The article focused on people having good relationships with their lovers, friends, and colleagues

for positive results in life by improving an individual’s willingness to seek treatment in

the case of an illness, stress relief, and overall happiness, whereas the research article measured

for other factors separate from friendship, that could result in life satisfaction.

The article did go further to suggest ways in which people could better their relationships

Though the article failed to include the other variables, the use of other research papers gave it

more information about the premise of the article, enough to make the article a credible source

for information.

Given the fact that relationship research is young (Miller, 2012, p.42), it is no surprise that there

are hearsays and stereotypes surrounding relationships of all kinds and its effect on us as

humans. This particular case shows how the use of multiple research papers can increase the

integrity of a media article, when separated and looked at in sections, the media article fails to
capture the essence and purpose of the research papers used but when read in its whole context,

the media article, though reducing the study, reliably conveys its intended message.

The use of research papers is an especially important criteria for a media article to be considered

reliable and I now question the reliability of media articles that fail to appropriately cite or fail to

use research papers.

 Citation

Amati V., Meggiolaro S., Rivellini G., and Zaccarin S. (2018). Social relations and life satisfaction: the role of
friends. Genus, 74(7), https://doi.org/10.1186/s41118-018-0032-z.
Edelmann B. (2022). Healthy, high quality relationships matter more than we think. Discover.
https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/healthy-high-quality-relationships-matter-more-than-we-think
Miller S.R. (2012). Intimate relationships seventh edition. McGraw hill. ISBN 978-0-07-786180-3.