Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation
 

Satisfactions and dissatisfactions of college home economics majors in retail career

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  • This thesis is a study of the job satisfaction Home Economics majors experience from their work in junior executive positions in retailing, an investigation of their former expectations and approach to retailing, and an evaluation of certain specific course areas usually included in clothing, textiles, and related course areas in Home Economics curriculums. Information was obtained by surveying women currently in junior executive positions with retail firms in the western states. The satisfaction of respondents who had completed requirements for a degree in Home Economics was then compared with the satisfaction of young women who had completed requirements for a degree in any other four-year college curriculum. It became apparent from a review of the current literature on job satisfaction studies that three main categories of job satisfaction are agreed upon by many researchers. These are the satisfaction which the worker's pay and status brings him in the outside community, the satisfaction the individual receives from being employed by a certain firm and being in certain surroundings, and the intrinsic satisfactions of the actual work being done. These three categories were used as a basis to develop situations which were felt to influence job satisfaction. These situations were then used to form the job satisfaction measurement used in this study. A questionnaire was constructed to measure job satisfaction, realistic approach, and adequate preparation, and was set up in three parts. The first part of the questionnaire required the respondent to indicate demographic information, to give reasons for selecting a retail career, to evaluate major preparation, and to objectively rate her job satisfaction. The second part of the questionnaire measured preparation and realistic approach to retailing, and the third part consisted of 81 situations designed to yield a satisfaction score. Four hundred and ninety questionnaires were sent to twenty-three personnel directors in department and departmentalized speciality stores in the western states with a request that these personnel directors distribute the questionnaires to their executive trainees. Eight personnel directors indicated that they had distributed the questionnaires to their trainees and requested copies of the results of this study. Ten replied that they did not wish their trainees to cooperate in the study and 164 incompleted questionnaires were returned by them. Five personnel directors did not reply to the author's letter asking for cooperation. Of the 326 questionnaires possibly distributed to trainees, 120 were returned by young women in junior executive positions. Fifty-eight of the 120 were discarded as unusable, leaving 62 returns composed of 25 Home Economics majors and 37 non-majors. This was a 19 percent return of the total number of questionnaires which could have been received by trainees. The returned questionnaires were analyzed with the use of several statistical techniques. A mean satisfaction score for each respondent was determined on the basis of responses to the 81 situations in Part C. The Student's t-test was then used to test for differences between the average of the Home Economics majors' scores and the average of the non-majors' scores. Respondents were classified by age, length of service, age at decision of occupation, and location of college attended, and multiple range tests were used to test for differences in job satisfaction between respondents checking the various classifications. Frequency counts were made of the reasons each respondent indicated for selecting a retail career. Frequency counts were also made of each respondent's evaluation of certain clothing, textiles, and related course areas. The Student's t-test was used to test for differences in the realistic approach, as well as to determine the difference in preparation, between the two groups. The four questions designed to measure realistic approach were also analyzed independently with the use of the chi-square test for independence to determine if there was a significant difference between the realistic approach of the two groups based on the individual questions. Means for all respondents, means for Home Economics majors, and means for non-majors were determined for each of the 81 situations measuring job satisfaction to identify situations with which respondents in each of these groups were satisfied or dissatisfied. These situations were arranged in order from high satisfaction to low satisfaction for all respondents and listed in Appendix C. Also included in Appendix C are the differences between the major means and non-major, means for each of the 81 situations. The relationship between respondents' objective ratings of satisfaction and their subjective satisfaction scores are displayed in a two-way contingency table to show the distribution of frequency of occurrence of the subjective and objective measurements. The data collected from the questionnaire revealed that the mean satisfaction scores of majors and non-majors differed, and non-majors were significantly more satisfied than majors in retail junior executive training. Majors were more satisfied than non-majors with some situations and dissatisfied with others. The recommendation was made that these situations be presented to Home Economics majors planning to enter retail careers in order that they might more fully realize how these situations in their future work will affect them personally. Non-majors were also significantly more realistic than majors in, their approach to retailing. Majors felt significantly more adequately prepared than non-majors in clothing, textiles, and related course areas, but a few areas of inadequacy in Home Economics college preparation were noted for the majors. Generally, it appeared that Home Economics majors feel their college major is useful in their retail work, and a greater percentage of the majors than the non-majors would again select the same college curriculum if given the opportunity to choose again. Reasons for selecting retail careers were similar for the two groups and an interest in clothing was the reason most frequently indicated by both groups. It was concluded that Home Economics majors in this study may experience less satisfaction in retail careers than non-majors because of a lack of a realistic approach, and that future research should be conducted to determine what causes this dissatisfaction, and how it may be alleviated.
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