Gender roles and sports in adolescent girls

Lack of leisure and time to self have been found to be major stressors for mothers. This paper examines perceived stress‐relieving benefits gained from involvement in a 12 week exercise class program by a group of mothers (n?=?30, x? age?=?37.3 years). Qualitative data indicated that exercise classes had the capacity to reduce perceived stress levels. The exercising mothers reported greater feelings of well‐being mainly due to gaining a space of their own, time‐out from busy schedules and the burden of childcare, and the feeling of doing something to improve their physical appearance. The negative or constraining aspects of exercise class participation included normalisation and self examination of women's bodies, and self‐surveillance rather than freedom of choice. The conclusions of this paper suggest that exercise classes can provide one avenue for mothers to take more control over their own health and lifestyle.     

Social class: a multivariate analysis of its effect on expenditures for household services

Multivariate statistical techniques were used to explore two major conceptual issues in consumer behaviour research involving social class: (1) the importance of income, as compared to social class, in determining household behaviour, and (2) the effect of the status of wives on the behaviour of their households. A subsample of expenditure data, collected from 5,994 husband-wife families, as part of the 1973 Consumer Expenditure Survey, was used in the analysis. The dependent variable was expenditures for household services. The independent variables included total consumption expenditures (a proxy for income), the status of the wife, the status of the husband, family type, location, and characteristics of the dwelling. The results of an Ordinary Least Squares regression procedure demonstrated that total consumption expenditures were the most important variable in determining expenditures for household services. The size of the effect of the status of the wife was comparable to that of the status of the husband. In both cases, the effect was significant but small.     

The Effects of Consumer Education on Consumer Search

This paper reports the results of an empirical investigation of the relationship between selected consumer and marketplace characteristics—focusing on participation in consumer education activities—and consumers’ prepurchase information search behavior. A need exists for further study of the counteractive effects that consumer education is likely to have with respect to preferences for search and to the efficiency with which consumers conduct search.