Having been a "professional expat" for the past several years, I can assure you that it's not that simple. Yes, hearing their stories can bias your decision up or down by a few points. But, just like choosing a Linux distro: you can only know if it's for you if you live in it. There are no ways (that I know of) to successfully quantify what one seeks in a situation, otherwise eharmony.com would have taken over the world.