What's important to Houston women : an exploratory study of self-interest and extra-interest among women of different marital and parental status

This study asked whether there are differences between the "self-interest" and "extra-interest" among women of various marital and parental status. The 140 subjects studied are women 25 through 34 years old living in the Greater Houston Area. Subjects were drawn from two shopping mall populations as well as, employees of the American Red Cross, employees of Brown and Root, Inc., employees of a middle school in Southwest Houston, residents of a Southeast and Southwest neighborhood, and students of the Graduate School of Social Work at the University of Houston. The median age is 28.981. None of the subjects indicated having less than a G.E.D. or high school diploma while 11.5% had postgraduate degrees. The subjects were divided into four marital/ parental status categories. They are single women with children (37%), married women without children (17.9%), married mothers (37.1%), and single mothers (15%). A static-group comparison pre-experimental research design (Campbell & Stanley, 1966) was used as an exploratory study for which a survey instrument was developed, tested, and used. A careful review of literature did not uncover enough related data to substantiate the use of advance hypotheses in a more rigorous research design. The project did, however, generate further ideas for scientific study and provided a means by which to develop hypotheses for testing. Two-tailed tests for differences between means (Champion, 1981) at the .10 level of significance, revealed that there is a significant difference between the levels of interest among women of different marital and parental status. [...]