Do exchange students cheat on their partners?

1. Introduction

Last year I made a research about weight gain of exchange students during the exchange period so this year I decided to make different kind of research. Exchange students have the reputation that they cheat on their boyfriends/girlfriends who are in their home countries. Also one friend suggested that this kind of research and I thought that it would be interesting to find out if Erasmus student cheat or not.

2. Research method

The data was collected by posting a link of e-form in two Facebook groups which had around 300 and 400 members. Members of these Facebook groups were mainly exchange students in Turkey and some Turkish students who are interested in getting to know international students and have done exchange year before. I also sent the link to some exchange student friends from Ankara. 23 persons filled in the e-form which is quite low number considered that how many people could have seen the e-form. Low response rate decreases the reliability of the research. E-form consisted three questions: 1. sex? with answer options male and female. 2. Did you cheat on your boyfriend/girlfriend who is in your home country during your exchange period? With definition that kissing is counted as cheating. Options to the question number two were: I am single, I cheated and I did not cheat. Third question was an open question where everybody was free to comment why did they cheat or how did they manage to survive without cheating or anything else they wanted to add. First two questions were obligatory and the third one was optional.

3. Background
During exchange period students get to know many new people. Then you might meet get attracted to a new person. Being in another country makes cheating easier because friends or your partner cannot catch you. They just have trust what you say about your actions. Many parties and alcohol can make you also more vulnerable for cheating.

4. Results
According to the research exchange students are more like to cheat than to be faithful to their partners. 67 % of the exchange students cheated on their partner. 78 % of men cheated on their partner as among women 50 % cheated on their partner which means that 50 % of women were faithful for their partner. 65 % of exchange students were in a relationship during the exchange period. In relationship status there were just a few percent difference between men and women.

In the open question people gave different reasons why did they end up cheating or how did they survive without cheating. Persons mentioned that they cheated because they were drunk, they just wanted to cheat, to give revenge for their cheating partner in their home country, other person did not care even they had a partner, the perspective changed during exchange year and amazing girls. People who did not cheat mentioned that Skype, masturbation, cheating being totally unacceptable and importance of relationship helped them to survive without cheating.

5. Conclusions
We can conclude that men cheat more likely than women during the exchange period. According to this research majority of the students are not faithful during their exchange period.  As most students are in a relationship during the exchange period they believe that they can keep the relationship together during the exchange period. Being in a relationship is not either a barrier for going to exchange. In reality it seems that going to exchange period is not a good idea for your relationship because majority end up cheating. Further research could be done for example how many relationships end after or during exchange period. To get more reliability the research should be repeated to get more responses.