Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

12-1984

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Communication

Major Professor

Alan D. Fletcher

Committee Members

Joseph R., J. B. H., Donald S. H.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine whether different sex-role references in magazine advertisements affected women's reactions to the advertisements, and whether the type of magazine in which the advertisement appeared and the employment status of women also influenced the reactions.

The procedure used was a forced-exposure, post-test only, 4 X 2 X 3 factorial design with repeated measures on the last factor. The sample consisted of 72 women, with 18 subjects in each of four categories of employment status. Two categories of employed women—those who defined themselves as career-oriented and those who considered their employment as "just a job"—and two categories of housewives—those who chose to stay at home and those who planned to work outside the home in the future—formed the four levels of the first factor. The second factor consisted of two types of magazines selected as the media vehicles in the study and defined as either traditional or progressive magazines. The third factor, three types of advertisements which varied in their headlines and were operationally defined as traditional, neutral and progressive approaches, formed the third factor.

Dependent measures consisted of three measures of cognitive responses, attitude toward the advertisements and two measures of purchase intention. The measures were repeated for all three advertisements for each of the subjects.

Through analysis of variance, the results indicated that at least one of the three factors produced significant effects on all of the dependent measures. Specifically, the type of advertisement tended to dominate the effects. For all but one dependent measure. Traditional advertisements performed significantly poorer than either the Neutral or Progressive advertisements. Women from the two groups of employed women generally rated all of the advertisements lower than women who were not employed. The type of magazine in which the advertisements appeared showed to be an effect mainly when interacting with employment status or the type of advertisement.

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