Children'S Housing Style Preferences

Abstract

The effects of region, socioeconomic level, age, and sex in children were examined in a study of housing style preferences using 126 children and 88 adults. Children's samples came from middle-class (n = 34) and lower income (n = 23) schools, and a low-income camp (n = 21) in the Northeast, a middle-class school in the Midwest (n = 23), and a lower income (n = 25) school in the South. Adults were primarily undergraduates from the Northeast. Participants separately ranked for preference two sets of houses, one from Kinzy (Langdon, 1982), the second from McAlester and McAlester (1984). They also ranked the McAlester and McAlester stimuli for cost. Results indicated no socioeconomic and regional differences, but a sizable number of differences when the judgments of children and adults were contrasted and when preferences by sex were compared. As in previous research (Langdon, 1982; Nasar, 1988, 1 989b), adults preferred the Farm and Tudor styles, and significantly more so than children; children liked the Ranch and Colonial houses significantly more than did adults. In the second stimulus set, adults preferred the Minimal Traditional, Split-level, Neo-French, and Mansard significantly more than the children, whereas the children, in contrast to the adults, significantly preferred the Mobile home, Quonset hut, and Geodesic dome.