Sex equity in early childhood environments

Many children spend their days in day-care centres where they have the opportunity to learn about sex appropriate behaviours. The instrument Sex Equity in Early Childhood Environments (SEECE) was developed for use in promoting equiry. Field-tested and revised, the instrument addresses the areas of teaching behaviour, child awareness, centre and community, facilities and equipment and career awareness. The SEECE instrument can be used with relative ease in focusing on changes needed to achieve a more equitable environment.     

Secondary household production of food: the influence of home meal preparation on food expenditures and reported adequacy

A path model was tested to ascertain the relationships between certain socio-economic and demographic variables, the percentage of household meals prepared and eaten at home (secondary household production), food expenditures, and the household's reported adequacy of food consumed. Significant positive predictors of secondary household production of food were the age of the head and household size. Negative predictors were education of the head, income of the head(s) and number of hours worked by the household head(s). By far the most important predictor was the number of hours worked. The strongest predictor of food expenditures was household size. Other positive predictors were income of the head(s), number of household heads and the degree of urbanization. Negatively affecting food expenditures was secondary household production of food, indicating the ‘saving’ effect of preparing meals at home. The household's reported adequacy of their food was predicted by the positive effect of education of the head, age of the head, tenure, hours worked by the head(s) and number of household heads. Although the number of hours the heads are employed decreased the percentage of meals prepared at home, and the percentage of meals at home negatively affected expenditures, the number of employment hours had no effect on food expenditures.     

It Don't Come Easy: Overcoming Obstacles to Technology Use Within a Resistant Consumer Group

To identify ways in which resistance can be overcome and technology's potential realized, we study acceptance and use of a specific technology, the Internet, by a specific resistant group, older consumers. Using interviews and a survey of consumers who are over 65 years old, we discover that curiosity and proactive coping drive technology optimism, which then predicts adoption and heavier usage. Motivated seniors with technology discomfort get help to adopt and continued assistance to learn usage repertoires. Surprisingly, technology discomfort is positively rather than negatively related to usage enthusiasm. Implications are drawn for consumer groups resistant to technology.     

Price and Volume Reactions to Public Information Releases: An Experimental Approach Incorporating Traders' Subjective Beliefs*

This paper examines how market prices, volume, and traders' dividend expectations respond to public information releases in laboratory markets for a long-lived financial asset. The objective is to study deviations from the symmetric information risk-neutral rational expectations (RE) benchmark, which predicts no trade in such settings. The results of a series of double-auction and call markets are reported in which traders manage a portfolio of cash and asset shares over 15 rounds of trading. A public signal regarding the value of the liquidating dividend is released every third round, and traders' subjective expectations of the liquidating dividend are elicited each round as cash-motivated forecasts. We find that, despite the public dividend signal, traders' dividend forecasts are heterogeneous. Forecasts and prices both underreact to the public signals, with prices under-reacting more than forecasts. In general, price changes are not closely associated with public signals, and there is greater excess price volatility in double auctions than in call markets. Forty-three percent of trades are inconsistent with the trader's forecasts, and inconsistent trades occur more frequently in the double-auction markets. On average, approximately 10 percent of the outstanding shares are traded in each round, and trading volume is increasing in the mean absolute forecast revision and decreasing in the contemporaneous dispersion in forecasts. These results suggest that differential processing of the public signal and/or speculative trading for short-term gain may help to explain why symmetric information RE predictions are often not supported in empirical and experimental settings. They also suggest that market reactions to public information releases may be influenced by market microstructure.     

Toward Consumer Efficiency: A Model for Improved Buymanship

This paper suggests that changes in the economic, marketing, and social environments call for alternative approaches to the traditional models of buymanship. The authors propose a shopping model that incorporates four main tenets: (1) search is conceived as a continuous process; (2) consumers take advantage of retail price competition at one point in time and over time; (3) an acceptable set of brands and stores is integral to purchase decisions; and (4) low price on an acceptable brand triggers purchase. Implications for consumer buying, research, and consumer education are identified.     

Constraints,Domain Conditions,and Well-Being: Evidence from Poland during the Transformation

The relationships among the recent changes in socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of the household, domain conditions (objective well-being), and the household members' assessment of their situation (subjective well-being) are assessed with data from 600 households in the province of Lublin, Poland. Four domains are included in the measures of recent change, domain conditions, and well-being: housing, household equipment, food consumption, and transportation. As expected, domain conditions are a function of household constraints; well-being is a function of domain conditions and recent change. Rural residents have significantly poorer domain conditions than urban residents, but report significantly higher levels of well-being.     

Factors that Influence Adolescents to Smoke

Predictor variables previously examined in separate studies (prior beliefs, peer pressure, family smoking, advertising, and antismoking information) were combined in a single study, surveying 246 adolescents. The variables were found to be significant predictors of smoking level, but the importance of each predictor varied by grade level, gender, and ethnicity. Overall, family smoking behavior, peer pressure, and prior beliefs were more important in predicting smoking level than were advertising and antismoking information. Public policy implications are discussed.