usha chowdhary - self-esteem, age identification, and media exposure of the elderly and their...

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Clothing and Textiles Research Journal

DOI: 10.1177/0887302X88007001051988; 7; 23Clothing and Textiles Research Journal

Usha ChowdharyFashionability

Self-Esteem, Age Identification, and Media Exposure of the Elderly and their Relationship to

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Self-Esteem,Age Identification,and Media

Exposure of the Elderly and their Relationshipto Fashionability

Usha Chowdhary

Authors address: Department of Textile andApparel Management,University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211.

Abstract

The study examined the relationship between the fashionability of the elderly (65 and older) and its correlates.

Dillmans Total Design Method approach was executed to conduct the survey. Four hundred and thirty elderly men and

women participated in the study. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, factor analysis, and t-tests. The

results indicated that significant differences existed between fashionability and media exposure for the female styles. Nodifferences were found between fashionability and age identification and self-esteem for either sex. However, the findingsdid challenge some of the existing theories, which have been tested on younger populations.

Demographic reports indicate that changes are taking

place in the distribution ofage groups in the population in the

United States. The elderly (those over 65) represent about

12% of the total population and are projected to be about

18% by the year 2030 (Merrill & Norris, 1986; U.S. Bureau

of Census, 1983). Eighty-five percent of the elderly live as

heads of households, 10% live with their children or other

relatives, and only 5% percent are institutionalized

(Schewe, 1983). Such a shift in the age groups and in the

changing status of the elderly raises several issues. Tworelevant to this study include the marketing of consumer

goods and the quality of life. Sontang and Schalter (1982)

provided theoretical evidence to suggest that an individuals

feelings toward self are the most important perceptions of

life quality. These researchers also emphasized that clothingcontributes to the psychological proximity of self. With

aging, appearance becomes more of a liability than an asset.

Therefore, appropriate clothing selection can improve both

appearance and self-esteem of the elderly.The concept of the elderly as a homogeneous group of

&dquo;old-folks&dquo; with negative attributes such as being slow, sick,

poor, and less fashion conscious consumers has been

challenged (Martin, 1976; Neugarten, 1980; Schewe,1983). The elderly do not necessarily have the same

chronological and psychological age. They may feel youngeror older than their actual age. Feeling younger than their age

provides them with the incentive to act and look younger

(Baum & Boxley, 1983). Clothing can help them accom-

plish this goal. Martin (1976) suggested that older womenare not an exploitable target for leftover styles. Rather, most

elderly women wish to keep up-to-date with fashion trends

(Bader, 1983; Richards, 1981; Schewe, 1983). To remain

well informed, the elderly seek fashion information frommedia and interpersonal communication (Kaiser & Chand-

ler, 1982).Clothing is a form of nonverbal communication and helps

individuals in boosting their self-esteem (Aldredge, 1973;

Bader, 1983; Calhoun & Morse, 1977; Feather, Martin, &Miller, 1979; Schneider, 1974). However, conflicting

viewpoints exist as to whether fashionable or classic stylesof clothing would enhance individuals cognitive and

physical selves. Therefore, this study was designed to

address the following three questions: 1) Is there a

relationship between self-esteem and fashionability? 2) Isthere a relationship between age identification and

fashionability among the elderly? 3) Is media exposure ofthe elderly associated with their fashionability? In spite ofthe strong theoretical basis and usefulness of these

questions, they have not previously been examined together.In addition to advancing theory and the knowledge base,some practical applications from the results are possible.

Literature Review

Several researchers have focused on self-concept and self-esteem of the elderly (Aldredge, 1973; Brubaker, 1976;Evans, 1978; Hunter, Linn & Harris, 1981-82; Perry &

Slemp, 1980; Puglisi, 1983; Rodins & Langer, 1980; Suls &

Mullen, 1983-84). However, contradictory viewpoints existas to whether self-esteem among the aged is decreasedbecause of loss in physical, social, and/or psychological

Acknowledgments are to the Faculty Research Committee, Miami

University, for funding this research and to Pushp Kamal, ProgramConsultant, Miami University, for helping with data analysis.


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power or fear of exploitation. Bader ( 1963) reported that

self-worth and self-respect were important needs of the

elderly and that clothing promotes the appearances of those

who live on an ego support system. She also added that styleand fit were as important to the elderly now as they were

when they were young. However, there has been no research

to suggest what kinds of styles (latest or classic) enhance an

individuals self-esteem. Adoption of the latest stylesinvolves

risk-taking.Individuals with low self-esteem are

less likely to take risks. Thus, one may hypothesize that theywould be less likely to adopt new styles. In contrast, they

may adopt new styles in order to reflect the image of a well

known fashion model. By doing so, they will take the role of

the fashion model and hide their own poor self-esteem. For

example, elderly men with poor self-esteem may like to dress

like John Forsythe in Dynasty or Johnny Carson in NBCs

Tonight Show, and elderly women may like to use BettyWhite in Golden Girls orAngela Lansbury in Murder She

Wrote as their role models. In another study (Chowdhary,

1987) the elderly identified these television performers as

some of their favorites. Therefore, it was deemed pertinentto test

empiricallythe

concepts and clarify the relationshipbetween the fashionability (degree to which an individual

selects classic versus fashionable styles) and self-esteem.

Considerable research has been reported on the age

identification or perception of the elderly (Baum & Boxley,1 y83; Keith, 1977; Linn & Hunter, 1979). Those who

perceived themselves as younger than their real age were

noted to have more positive attributes than those who

identified themselves as older. No research has been

reported on age perception of the elderly and clothing.However, clothing researchers who have focused on

availability of clothing for elderly women (Bartley &

Warden, 1962; Hoffman & Bader, 1974; Lumpkin &

Greenberg, 1982; Newton&

Tweten, 1975a; Newton&

Tweten, 1975b; Richards, 1981; Smathers & Horridge,

1978-79) reported that the elderly preferred to have stylish

clothing. The research reported in this paper empiricallytested the relationship between the style preference and age

perception of the elderly.The literature on media exposure has indicated that this

exposure is an important variable in any fashion related

research. Media exposure refers to both personal and

impersonal sources of fashion information used byindividuals to learn about the latest styles (Chowdhary, in

press; Chowdhary, 1984; Turnball & Meenaghan, 1980).It is well documented that the better-informed consumer is

more likely to choose the latest styles than is the less-informed consumer. However, most of the past research has

focused on youth and middle-aged groups while little

research has examined elderly populations. Lumpkin and

Greenberg ( 1982) reported two conflicting views regardingthe use of fashion information sources by elderly consumers.The first viewpoint suggested that the elderly use both massmedia and interpersonal sources of fashion information

before making clothing purchases. The second viewpointsuggested that the elderly choose one or the other method.

Therefore, it was believed relevant to investigate empiricallythe existing theoretical concepts which have been previously

tested on younger populations.The majority of fashion research has centered around a

younger population and women (Chowdhary, 1984;Polegato & Wall, 1980; Schrank & Gilmore, 1973;Summers, 1970). Only three articles regarding clothing formen are known to have been published (Baumgarten, 1975;Behal, 1977; Darden & Reynolds, 1972). It is now time toextend the frontiers of fashion research to determine how

clothing choices are related toself-esteem,

age identifica-

tion, and media exposure among elderly men and women.This assertion is also supported by the findings of Merrilland Norris ( 1986), who reported that &dquo;maintaining physicaland social attractiveness&dquo; is one of the most importantcompetencies for the elderly individuals, and of Mertz and

Stephens (1986), who noted that a majority of the elderlyuse several beauty treatments and cosmetics in the samenumber or more than the young individuals. Since the study

reported here is the first known research of its kind, it was

believed relevant to restrict clothing choices to the classicand latest styles in suits for both men and women. Otheroutfits (dress shirts, pant suits, jeans, etc.) were omitted tocontrol the

studybetter and to avoid

complexityin the

interpretation of results. However, follow-up works could

include other outfits in order to understand these

relationships from a broader perspective than exists in the

reported study.Based on the literature cited above, the following three

research hypotheses were generated:

Hypothesis I: The elderly with lower self-esteem willchoose more classic styles than those

with higher self-esteem will.

Hypothesis II: The elderly with younger age percep-tions are more likely to select the latest

styles than those with older age per-

ceptions will.

Hypothesis III: The better-informed elderly will tend to

select the latest style more often than dothe less-informed elderly.

In addition, demographic characteristics of the samplewere also examined.

Materials and Methods

Nine hundred and fifty elderly (age 65 or over) men andwomen were randomly selected from the list of voters for

Butler County; the list was obtained from the Board of

Elections Office in Hamilton, Ohio. Mail-in surveytechniques were used to collect data. The Total DesignMethod (TDM) approach of Dillman (1978) was adapted toconstruct and administer the mail surveys because this

methodology has been successfully used on various

populations. For the construction of the questionnaire,Dillman (1978) suggested that a cover letter should addressthe problem and stress how opinions of respondents are

important. He also recommended grouping similar questionsand providing instructions for individual as well as a groupedset of questions. He also suggested fitting or grouping

questions for each individual measure on a separate page.

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The majority of his recommendations were followed exceptfor his suggestion for formating the questionnaires in booklet

form.

The Total Design Method (Dillman, 1978) approach

suggests the use of three follow-ups (one week, three weeks,and seven weeks after the first mailing) to improve the

response rate. Time and money constraints required that the

number of follow-ups for this study be limited to two. The

initial mailing included the questionnaire, cover letter, and a

return envelope with first class postage. Dillmans (1978)suggestions for the folding of contents together and mailing

early in the week were followed.A post card follow-up was

mailed to all subjects one week after the initial mailing. The

intent was to thank early respondents, to inform the

nonrespondents about the importance of their participation,and to extend an invitation to obtain a replacement question-naire. Subjects who failed to respond to the questionnaireswithin three weeks were sent a replacement questionnaire,

follow-up letter, and return envelope.As a token reward,interested participants were promised a summary of

results.

The instrument included three established measures with

demonstrated reliability and validity and a fourth one which

was developed by the researcher. The Self-esteem measure

of Rosenberg (1965) was used for this study. Rosenbergsmeasure has been tested globally with a variety of samples

including the elderly and has been reported to be reliable and

valid. Sontang and Schalter (1982) recognized that

Rosenbergs instrument of self-esteem is an appropriatemeasure to use in clothing research. TheAge identificationmeasure (Baum & Boxley, 1983) has been used in research

with the elderly and is consistent with Neugartens (1980)concept of heterogeneity in the elderly population. The

Media exposure measure of Polegato and Wall ( 1980) was

adapted for the elderly population of both sex groups. The

adaptation included deleting &dquo;campus newspaper ads&dquo; and

&dquo;classmates,&dquo; changing &dquo;television performers&dquo; to &dquo;male

television performers&dquo; and &dquo;female television performers&dquo;and &dquo;current movies&dquo; to &dquo;movie actors&dquo; and &dquo;movie

actresses,&dquo; and adding &dquo;prominent men&dquo; and &dquo;fashion

columns in newspapers.&dquo;The Fashionability measure was developed by the

researcher. The measure consisted of one classic style and

one latest style for both male and female suits. The

researcher looked at the latest magazines (GentlemensQuarterly, Esquire, Glamour, and Seventeen) from the lastfive years and selected 50 different styles which were then

reduced to four male and three female outfits. Since the

intent was to select one classic and one latest style for both

males and females, the styles which looked similar but

reflected very subtle differences were deleted. Finally, 40

retailing majors rank ordered selected outfits from classic to

the latest for both male and female outfits. The highestranked outfits were kept as the latest style (see Figure 1 and

Figure 2). It may be mentioned here that the classic stylewas perceived as classic (for both male and female) by all

judges. Based on the findings of Buckley (1983), who

compared the perception of judges and respondents re-

garding attractiveness as manipulated by dress, bipolar

styles (classic and latest) were used. She recommended that

perceptions of subjects and judges are more in line with each

other when extreme levels of attractiveness are used. To

determine the fashionability of respondents, subjects were

asked to select the garment they would prefer to wear.

Figure 1

FEMALE OUTFITS

Figure 2

MALE OUTFITS




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Factor analysis was executed to test the unidimension-

ality of the measures. Cronbachs alpha was used to test the

reliability of both developed and established measures. De-

scriptive statistics and t-tests were used to analyze the.

data.

Results

Of the 950 mailed questionnaires, 800 were delivered and

a usable sample of 430 (54%) was obtained. The mean agewas 70.8 with a range of 65 to 91. Thirty-eight percent were

male and sixty-two percent were female. Ninety-six percentwere white, about two percent were black, and one percentwere eitherAmerican Indians orAsians. Eighty-five percentwere the heads of their households, eleven percent lived with

their children or relatives and only one percent were

institutionalized. These patterns were quite consistent with

the national data except for the institutionalized elderly.

Sixty percent were married, five percent were single, five

percent were divorced or separated, and twenty-nine percentwere

widowed. The average annual income of therespondents was $18,000.

Factor analysis was computed to test the unidimension-

ality of the measures used. Since the self-esteem measure of

Rosenberg (1965) has five positive and five negativestatements, it was deemed important to test whether

respondents saw two dimensions of the measure while

responding to the items. The same was true for the media

exposure measure which had 21 items, theoretically

representing consumer-dominated, market-dominated, and

neutral sources of fashion information. It was believed that

factor analysis would categorize those items into three

categories with more accuracy and precision for the selected

population.The findings revealed that two factors were extracted for

the self-esteem (Table 1 ) measure: positive and negative.Two factors explained 57.2 % ofthe variance. Three factors

were extracted for the Media exposure (Table 2) measure:

consumer-dominated sources (which include other people as

influentials), market-dominated sources (which include

impersonal sources of fashion information to convince

consumers), and neutral sources (which could be personal or

impersonal type but are not persuasive). Three factors

explained 49% of the total variance. Extraction of three

factors is consistent with the findings of Polegato and Wall

( 1980). However, the items for all three categories were not

exactly the same as those used by Polegato and Wall (1980).Some of the differences were as follows. The elderly

respondents perceived &dquo;fashion shows&dquo; and &dquo;fashion

counselors&dquo; as market-dominated rather than consumer-

dominated sources and used &dquo;television performers&dquo; and

&dquo;male friends&dquo; as consumer-dominated sources rather than

neutral sources of information as reported by Polegato and

Wall (1980). These inconsistencies may be attributed to the

fact that the sample for the present study represented senior

citizens of both sexes from oneAmerican county. In con-

trast, Polegato and Wall (1980) studied college women fromCanada.

Table 1. Factors extracted from the self-esteem measure.

Data analysis indicated that the elderly with high self-esteem did not differ from the elderly with low self-esteem in

relation to their fashionability as determined by their

response to both male and female outfits. However,

respondents were found to have enjoyed fairly high self-esteem (M=32.4). The total possible points one couldreceive was 40. Hypothesis I was rejected.Although no

differences existed between the elderly who selected classic

versus latest styles, some differences were found when self-

esteem was tested for the male and female respondents.

Male elderly (M=0.16) received significantly higher factorscores than female elderly (M= -0.10) for the positive self-esteem factor (t 1403] = 2.67, p


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Summers, J.O. (1970). The identity of womens clothingfashion opinion leaders. Journal of Marketing Research,1, 178-185.

Turnbull, P.W., & Meenaghan,A. (1980). Diffusion ofinnovations and opinion leadership and review. Euro-

pean Journal of Marketing, 14, 3-33.

U.S. Bureau of the Census. (1983). Some demographicaspects of aging in the United States. Washington, DC:U. S. Department of Commerce.

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