While the surveys were commissioned by Tinder, Ms. Carbino said her position as a social scientist was to provide a valid and realistic view of the world. "The realistic view might not provide what the company wants," she said, "however it's my responsibility to do so and provide data that is accurate."

It is unclear whether the surveys sampled similar and representative demographics, a fact that Jennifer Lundquist, a sociologist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst who researches online dating, said indicated that more studies were needed to determine if Tinder's surveys were accurate.

"One issue with the non-online dating comparison group is that given how normalized and destigmatized online dating has become for this age group, it's unusual not to participate in online dating," Professor Lundquist said. As a result, she said, the offline daters "may be a weirdly skewed group, or as sociologists would say negatively select."

Professor Lundquist also questioned the motivations for the survey, pointing to the anecdotal belief among many daters that Tinder's picture-based feature leads it to be a "hookup" app rather than a mechanism for finding long-term partners. "It seems like Tinder is trying to work on their image with this survey," she said.

But despite Tinder's aims, and researchers' varying methods, the app's conclusions about the desire of online daters to commit may not be unfounded. In a 2012 report on a study by the sociologists Michael Rosenfeld and Reuben J. Thomas published in the American Sociological Review, the researchers found that couples who meet online are no more likely to break up than couples who meet offline. Mr. Rosenfeld's continuing research at Stanford University concludes that couples who meet online transition to marriage more quickly than those who meet offline. (The cohort of couples he studied met in 2009, before Tinder was founded; he is currently gathering data that include users of the app.)

Still, it is unclear whether Tinder's surveys, even bolstered by larger trends in online dating, will shift the public's perception of the app. It does not help that in a recent article in The California Sunday Magazine, Tinder's founder and chairman, Sean Rad, admitted to sexting with Snapchat users. But perhaps Ms. Carbino, who scours Tinder daily, sees what others can't: humans trying their best to connect. She is single and said she had found, and lost, love on Tinder.