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Thesis (PhD) -- University of South Australia, 1999

There have been substantial changes in the way that families interact with schooling at the point of school choice. These shifts have been brought about by market orientated educational policy changes, and by altered forms and experiences of ‘family’. This study explores this changed dynamic by researching how a group of mothers in one urban setting engaged in school choice over a period of fourteen months. The research set out to investigate the processes, behaviours and influences that mothers took to the task of choosing secondary schooling for their children. In particular it aimed to explore the personal, familial, cultural and social dimensions of this engagement. These objectives were pursued using feminist and phenomenological frames because these theoretical approaches allowed for a gendered and contextualised analysis of experience. Data was gathered longitudinally through return interviews with 20 women from one socially and culturally diverse local government area in Sydney, Australia. The analysis of data is informed by perspectives on markets and consumerism from the field of cultural studies. Bourdieu’s concepts of ‘capital’, ‘habitus’ and ‘field’ were also used along with the feminist concepts of ‘emotional labour’ and ‘emotional capital’ to analyse the way that neoliberal market orientated educational policies impacted on this group of middle Australians. This research shows that the Australian experience of school choice is an emotionally rich, highly context-specific, complex, gendered and cooperative process that contests the prevailing public rhetoric about the operations of markets and of choice. School choice, while not always welcomed by this group of middle Australians, is an overtly gendered activity mostly overseen and undertaken by mothers in gender-specific ways. For these women school choice was an activity that demanded considerable physical and emotional labouring adding significantly to mothers’ work in support of their children’s education. Further, the research showed how within this new marketised context, the family became the site for the contestation of taste via the negotiation of differing economic, social, cultural and emotional capitals vis a vis the structural imperatives imposed by the market. It showed that for these women and their families in this location, at this time, the promise of ‘choice’ was a hollow promise indeed.

This thesis presents a gendered analysis of factors that shape adolescent attitudes to Information Technology (IT) at key stages in their education. It draws on career decision-making literature, psychological self-efficacy literature and some of the more salient feminist literature. Results of interviews with students in junior, middle and senior secondary-schools in Australia are presented alongside those from students studying IT at two universities. This research provides relevant and current insight into reasons why females are not choosing IT courses to the same extent as males, that is not captured in the existing literature. The study found that many young women and men, while being almost equal in IT use and computer literacy, do not consider IT as a valid and independent discipline for future study or as a career. It found that IT rarely entered students’ schematic repertoire of possible future careers, a schematic repertoire strongly influenced by parental opinion at all stages of education. / It found a surprising proportion of the university students interviewed currently studying IT, did not consider this degree as their first choice and were often not convinced that they would continue in the career after graduation. This thesis concluded that while IT is a varied discipline that is unique in its many applications, to many students the discipline is predominately aligned to hardware and associated objects. It found that there is a deficit in student knowledge of what an IT career involves beyond that of the most stereotypical portrayal of a programmer, and that this deficit of knowledge is evident in both genders. It is apparent from this study that the lack of women in IT is not necessarily a gender issue, but an issue embedded in the image of the IT discipline, an image that lacks the status of a professional career.

The aim of this thesis is to identify the brand choice moderators that influence consumers' choice of one brand over another. This research examines the influence of five consumption values on brand choice behaviour within the New Zealand market for new road motorcycles using stepwise discriminant analysis. The greater variety of brands, forcing consumers to make more brand choices combined with the large financial value of some brands was the major motivator for this research. In reviewing the literature a gap emerged relating to brand choice behaviour for durable goods. This research addresses this gap through using the durable goods category of road motorcycles. Findings from this research concluded that consumption values do influence brand choice behaviour within the New Zealand market for new road motorcycles.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Dept. of Economics, University of Adelaide, 1984. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 469-480).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Tufts University, 2001. / Adviser: Sal Soraci. Submitted to the Dept. of Psychology. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 95-101). Access restricted to members of the Tufts University community. Also available via the World Wide Web;

Thesis (Ph. D.)--West Virginia University, 2007. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains iv, 82 p. : ill. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 44-47).

Thesis (Ed.D.)--University of Tulsa, 1970. / Bibliography: leaves 54-56.

Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögsk.