Texting plays an increasingly important role in romantic relationships. Along with the increased use and impact of technology in and on relationships, technology provides new approaches to observe and study relationships. This study demonstrates the potential for using unobtrusive measures of texting obtained through mobile data donation for the study of communication behaviors during relationship development. In particular, we examine how texting behaviors change prior to relationship formation and during a relationship transition. Our analysis of 1+ million text messages that 41 college-age romantic couples sent to each other during their first year of dating demonstrates (a) the utility of digital trace data for studying romantic relationship development, (b) the importance of obtaining and analyzing actual texting behaviors when observing interpersonal communication that is frequent, fast, and variable, and (c) the need for more theoretical specificity in how and why different kinds of communication behaviors change as relationships develop.

短信在恋爱关系中扮演着越来越重要的角色。随着技术在人际关系中的使用和影响的增加，技术提供了观察和研究人际关系的新方法。这项研究证明了使用通过移动数据捐赠获得的不显眼的短信措施来研究关系发展过程中的交流行为的潜力。特别是，我们研究了在关系形成之前和关系过渡期间发短信行为的变化。我们对 41 对大学时代浪漫情侣在约会的第一年相互发送的 1+00 万条短信的分析表明 (a) 数字跟踪数据在研究浪漫关系发展方面的效用，