Methodology. - SwipeLife

SwipeLife’s sourcing and editorial practices are described here in full. The document is intended to be specific enough that a reader can assess, for any given claim in any dispatch, whether the sourcing meets the stated standard. If it does not, that is a correction.

Source hierarchy

Five tiers. Only Tier 1 and Tier 2 are cited in SwipeLife dispatches.

Tier 1 — Required. Peer-reviewed academic journals with named authors, specific volume/issue/page numbers, and digital object identifiers where available. Federal government datasets (FTC Consumer Sentinel, FBI IC3, BLS American Time Use Survey, U.S. Census Bureau, Pew Research Center). Clinical classification documents: DSM-5-TR (APA, 2022). Professional clinical organization position documents (APA, AMA). Primary monographs by named researchers where the work is the established reference in the field (Bowlby, 1969; Mikulincer and Shaver, 2016; Stark, 2007).

Tier 2 — Acceptable corroboration only. Major investigative outlets with documented editorial standards and source transparency: ProPublica, New York Times investigative, Reuters investigative, The Guardian long-form. U.S. Institute of Peace. State Department country reports and TIP reports. These sources may corroborate Tier 1 findings but do not replace them as primary citations.

Tier 3 — Not cited. Wikipedia. Aggregator sites without primary sourcing. Summary articles in popular science outlets where the original study is not linked or named.

Tier 4 — Not cited. Advocacy organization white papers where the organization has a stated position on the topic. Manufacturer-funded research. Platform-generated statistics or user behavior data published by the platform being analyzed.

Tier 5 — Not cited. Health blog posts. Dating advice columns. Influencer-sourced claims. Anonymously sourced behavioral claims without corroborating Tier 1 data.

Pitch to publish: the seven-step process

Methodology · Editorial Process

Pitch-to-publish in seven steps

Step 1: Identify the empirical claim to investigate. Every SwipeLife dispatch begins with a specific empirical question, not a topic. Not “avoidant attachment” but “what does the regulatory mechanism of avoidant deactivation look like in digital communication contexts, and what does the literature say about it?”

Step 2: Locate primary sources before writing begins. The literature search precedes the draft. This is a structural requirement, not a preference. Writing that begins from a conclusion and then looks for supporting sources produces different analysis than writing that begins from the literature.

Step 3: Map the clinical-vs-colloquial distinction where applicable. For every clinical term used — attachment style, gaslighting, love bombing, Gambling Disorder — the operational definition is established from the primary source before the term appears in the draft.

Step 4: Draft with source citations inline throughout. Citations are embedded in the draft at the point where the claim is made. They are not added post-hoc. This produces a draft in which every paragraph is anchored to a named source.

Step 5: Editorial review for voice and factual accuracy. The Editor-in-Chief reviews every dispatch for voice consistency and factual accuracy before publication. For dispatches outside the editor’s primary expertise, an additional review against the primary sources is conducted.

Step 6: Final source verification against originals. Every cited source is verified against the original document before publication. Page numbers, authors, journal titles, and years are confirmed. Where a study has been corrected or retracted post-publication of a SwipeLife dispatch, a correction notice is appended.

Step 7: Publish with full references block and last_reviewed date. Every published dispatch carries a complete

References

block in the format: Author. Title. Publisher; Year. For journal articles: Author. Article title. Journal Name. Year;Volume(Issue):Pages. Every dispatch displays a last_reviewed date.

Clinical terminology standards

When SwipeLife uses clinical terminology, it uses the operational definition from the clinical literature. Where that definition has been updated or revised in recent editions of the DSM or in recent meta-analyses, the current definition is used and the version is cited.

SwipeLife does not use clinical terms in colloquial or expanded senses. “Narcissist” in SwipeLife dispatches means Narcissistic Personality Disorder as defined in DSM-5-TR, or it means someone exhibiting documented traits from the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) scale in a cited study. It does not mean a person who posts a lot of selfies.

When the colloquial use of a clinical term has diverged significantly from the operational definition — as has occurred with “gaslighting,” “love bombing,” and “trauma” — SwipeLife dispatches note the distinction explicitly.

Corrections protocol

Factual errors are corrected in the original article with a dated correction notice appended at the top of the piece: “Correction, [date]: [original claim]. [Correct claim]. Source: [correcting source].”

SwipeLife does not unpublish articles to remove errors. Silent edits — correcting an error without disclosing it — are not practiced. The correction record is part of the publication’s editorial history.

To submit a correction: eleanor@swipelife.com. Required: the specific claim, the article URL, and the evidence of the error with its primary source. Anonymous correction submissions are evaluated on the merits of the sourcing provided, not on the identity of the submitter.

Corrections from the original authors of cited studies are given priority review. SwipeLife has a standing policy of contacting study authors when our characterization of their work is contested.

Conflict-of-interest policy

SwipeLife accepts no advertising revenue. It has no financial relationship with any dating application, technology platform, matchmaking service, subscription dating product, or company operating in the sector it covers. Neither editor holds equity in any company in these sectors. Neither editor accepts speaking fees from industry events.

Guest contributors are required to disclose financial relationships with any organization relevant to their piece. Disclosed relationships are noted in the author bio for that piece.

Updates and last_reviewed dates

The behavioral science literature evolves. Clinical frameworks are revised. Federal data is updated annually. SwipeLife dispatches carry a last_reviewed date indicating when the sourcing was last verified against current editions of the primary documents. Dispatches whose primary sources have been substantially updated are flagged for review and re-reviewed within 90 days of identified changes.