There has been a renewed research focus on developments within the family as a result of the broad social, economic and cultural developments that have occurred across Europe since the middle of the twentieth century. Arguably the rise in female, and particularly maternal employment, has produced the greatest impact on family life and gender roles. Given that this division of labour is changing there is debate about whether men and women's expectations and acceptance of some aspects of gender roles - their gender role attitudes - have also changed. Gender role attitudes feed into an array of sociological debates such as those concerning gender inequalities, women's position in the labour market, declining fertility rates and family breakdown, and naturally feeds into the discourse surrounding welfare state and policy decision making. Whilst discussions that concern the family and personal life have also been littered with debates about the existence and influence of individualisation over every aspect of modern life. Three waves of the European Values Study (EVS) are used to explore gender role attitude change, focusing on the division of labour, over time from 1990 to 2008 and across 19 countries in Europe. Two data classification techniques are used to derive a three pronged and interconnected measure of gender role attitudes (Maternal employment, Job fulfilment and Economic independence). Two types of cluster analyses are then used to explore similarities in attitude change across countries and over time. Five welfare state typologies are then tested based on their efficacy to predict attitudes to gender roles. Finally cohort and sex-based variations in attitudes are also examined. The main findings are:• Gender role attitudes have shifted at the cross-European level towards more progressive perspectives over time from 1990-2008, with men found to be lagging behind women's more liberal attitudes.• There is evidence that welfares state typologies capture only a small amount of variance within gender role attitudes and therefore little evidence is found to support the idea that similarities in family-policy and socio-economic contexts are mirrored by similar attitudes.• The findings uncover evidence to indicate that both cohort and period effects are associated with gender role attitude change over time.• The results also identify some congruence with specific elements from theories of individualisation. The study supports findings of previous research that suggests people in these countries seem to be becoming more accepting of women's evolving biographies but that gender inequalities remain and men's attitudes continue to lag behind those of women. There is evidence to both support and reject the idea that we are living in more individualised societies.

The study reported in this article investigates whether or not consumers from Turkey and New Zealand attach similar levels of importance to various information sources in their purchase decisions and whether they are similar (dissimilar) in their opinions on advertisement in various media. Customers surveyed in Istanbul and Wellington serve as the database. Study results and their implications are discussed.

The motivation for subjective well-being research rather than Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is becoming important to the roles of many governments across the globe and so identifying the strongest correlates of subjective well-being is vital as a starting point to informing policies that support subjective well-being. This thesis investigated the correlates of subjective well-being. Chapter 1 introduced the topic and has been divided into two parts: section 1 explores the motivation for subjective well-being research and section 2 presents the conceptual model of subjective well-being. Chapter 2 gave the rationale for the methodological approaches taken to investigate factors that are associated with subjective well-being. Also, the methods chapter presented limitations of the data used. Chapter 3 explored the determinants of subjective well-being in representative samples of nations; and the results obtained in chapter 3 led to three systematic reviews and meta-analyses (Chapter 4, 5 and 6). Chapter 4 conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of the association between income inequality and subjective well-being to test the general assumption that people's subjective well-being can be increased by tackling income inequality and investigated inconsistencies of previous studies reporting a negative, positive or no association between income inequality and subjective well-being. Chapter 5 carried out a systematic review and meta-analysis of the association between health status and subjective well-being because the results of the empirical study conducted in chapter 3 suggest that health status is positively associated with subjective well-being. Chapter 6 conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of the association between financial satisfaction and subjective well-being as the results of the empirical study conducted in chapter 3 suggest that financial satisfaction is positively associated with subjective well-being. Chapter 7 discussed the results, highlighted the need for further studies and policy directions and concluded. Taken altogether these studies suggest that: (1) subjective well-being is important to informing policies that support subjective well-being, (2) they might be circumstances where income inequality may not be associated with people's subjective well-being, (3) health status and financial satisfaction are positively associated with subjective well-being and the magnitude of the association is affected by key operational and methodological factors, (4) life satisfaction might be preferred to happiness as a measure of subjective well-being because it may better captures the influence of health status and financial satisfaction, (5) government policies that support subjective well-being measures should consider using self-reported health status and financial satisfaction amongst factors that are correlated with people's subjective well-being, (6) the association between health status and subjective well-being and the link between financial satisfaction and subjective well-being are medium and further research is required to identify other strongest correlates of subjective well-being.

Poststructuralist and other critical analyses of sexuality, gender and identity are used to examine how New Zealand and Danish young adults drew on and challenged available discourses as they responded to representations of sexual interactions in the film Chasing Amy. The conversations about sexual practices in mixed gender, women only and men only focus groups illustrate the complex ways in which people construct their identities using subject positions available to them in different contexts as they responded to the movie, the talk of others and the researcher. The strengths and limitations of this approach to facilitating talk are examined as well as the conversations that occurred. The ways in which researchers in New Zealand and Denmark are themselves discursively positioned as theorists and investigators of gender and sexuality is also examined. The thesis illustrates how multiple connections and differences emerge across national and local environments. Talk about sexual negotiations among young adults recruited through university student networks suggests that assumptions about agency, sexual autonomy, reciprocity and women’s and men’s equal right to enjoy sex are still gendered while also challenging traditional understandings about men, women and sexual pleasure. This was, for example, highlighted in talk about receiving and giving oral sex in long-term heterosexual relationships and the ‘need’ for women to explore their bodies and become ‘capable (s)experts’ through masturbation. The thesis finally explores how gendered collective and individual identities sometimes intersect with social identities associated with ethnicity, religion, nationality and sexual identification. These intersections disrupt attempts in cross-national projects – including this thesis research – to form conclusions about national differences and other social identities.