Abstract
The purposes of the investigation were 1) to assess perceived importance of clothing norms, 2) to ascertain any significant differences existed in the level of the perceived importance (LPI) between female college students and middle-aged women, and 3) to examine relationship between the level and need for uniqueness (NFU). The sample was composed of 206 students and 161 middle-aged women. A scale was devised for the evaluation of LPI consisted of 7 factors (school uniform, clothings related to occasion, office, sex, age, modesty and Kimono). Subjects were asked to rate each statement on the clothing norms under two kinds of instructions : their attitudes (ATT) and their beliefs about the expectations of others (BEO) toward clothing norms.
The results revealed that discrepancy scores of ATT and BEO of the students were higher than the scores of the middle-aged women, and the former had more free attitude to the norms as compared with the latter. The NFU was measured by the 28 items developed by Okamoto. Based on the sum scores of the NFU, the students and the middle-aged women. were separately segmented into “high, medium and low” NFU groups. Significant differences in the discrepancy scores among the 3 NFU groups were found on five of the seven norm factors, and in each factor the mean discrepancy scores of the high NFU group were higher than those of the other groups. Analysis of variance also showed that significant differences existed among 3 NFU groups in ATT scores af all items, but did not in BEO scores. The findings indicated that the differences in the ATT scores mainly contributed to the differences in the discrepancy scores described above.
