NEARLY every TIME story, whatever its length, involves intensive research and reporting on all of its possible aspects. Among all our sections, Essay probably ranks as the one that, week after week, places the most demanding load on our researchers and correspondents. The basic reason is that its approach is so broad and deep. To provide writer and editor with food for thought and analysis, it must explore many areas of a subject that may never be mentioned on the printed page. Perhaps the most consistent sources for Essay are academics, particularly sociologists and psychologists, and we are deeply indebted to the many who are so generous in sharing their knowledge and views with us.

For this week's Essay on the single life, our staff worked principally in New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Houston, Seattle and San Francisco. While Researcher Lu Anne Aulepp (single) and Writer Stefan Kanfer (married, two children) began their task in New York by digging into the existing lore on the singles, the work in the field was assigned largely to reporters with a special qualification: singleness.

Among them was Mayo Mohs, a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles who does a good deal of reporting for us on the West Coast and whose own eloquent commentary on the single's problem is quoted in the Essay. As for reporting on the single life, he found that "it is a bit like reporting China--you can't believe everything you hear, and not even a lot of what you see. You gather most of your material by indirection--by looking, listening, being part of--rather than by asking." Sometimes, when he asked, the source was decidedly suspicious: "Try to tell a tableful of pretty girls in a busy dating bar that you're from TIME and want to buy them a drink and talk to them for a while. One well-made, micro-skirted blonde gave us the fish eye. 'TIME mag azine, huh? Well, that's a new one.'" On the other hand, an encounter with a cooperative source could also have its frustrations: "Working for TIME exercises a certain restraint on being a swinging single. You might meet a bright young thing at 10 p.m., say, who looks as if she'd like to linger over an interview or two, but you have to send your copy to New York that night and go out of town tomorrow. By the time you get back, she's going steady with someone else."

Researcher Sandra Burton started her reporting by sending a note to every single person on the TIME editorial staff requesting suggestions, experiences and opinions, carefully promising to "keep confidences." Then she put on her most searching demeanor and went prowling through the haunts of New York singles, posing as a lonely girl looking for a date. On a "Singles Weekend" at the Concord Hotel in the Catskills, her most gamesmanlike experience was with a young liquor distributor who, to build his image as a swinging single, had his room stocked with a case of champagne on ice.

During three weeks of roaming about the singles' special world, including a tour to Mexico, Reporter George Taber played the role of an advertising salesman on the prowl. He met girls in dating bars and signed on with computer dating services. All the while, he was writing letters about his fascinating experiences to his fiancee, Jean Belden, a New Jersey girl whom he met in Belgium three years ago and who has been working as a research assistant with a university group in Paris. Perhaps no one will ever be sure whether it was George's letters about his work that caused the change in schedule, but Jean packed up and came back from Paris two weeks early. As The Pleasures & Pain of the Single Life was going to press, George and Jean, as long planned, were married.

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