Individual Characteristic Variables Research Articles

Consumer adoption of videotex services

The study investigated the association of (a) communication variables, (b) product-related variables, and (c) individual characteristic variables on consumer awareness, interest, and attitude toward the Viewtron (videotex) system. The hypotheses drawn from diffusion of innovation literature were tested in the study conducted in South Florida where the Viewtron system was offered. The results suggest that marketers can play a dominant role in the diffusion of an innovation such as a videotex system.

Motivational Antecedents: A Test of Predictor Models

This paper reports the results of a study of motivational antecedents of military noncommissioned officers (NCOs). The antecedent variables examined included individual characteristics, organizational factors, and task characteristics. The results, which were based upon estimates of multiple regression equations predicting NCOs' estimates of expectancy and instrumentality, indicated several individual characteristic, organizational, and total characteristic variables were potentially important predictors of NCOs' estimates of job-related expectancy and instrumentality.

Neighboring in an urban environment.

Neighbors are an informal resource who may act individually to provide socioemotional support to each other as well as collectively to ameliorate problems in their residential environment. To explore when neighbors are likely to interact and provide aid and emotional support for each other, 702 residents living in a neighborhood in Nashville, Tennessee, were interviewed during 1978. Factor analysis was used to cluster several variables of individual characteristics of residents related to neighboring. Other indices assessed the block environment. Neighboring activities were found to be associated with an individual's psychological investment in his neighborhood as well as his rootedness and integration on his block, a positive sense of well-being, sex, and life stage. At the neighborhood block level, homogeneity of socioeconomic status (SES) contributed to neighbor relations along with indices of an individual's similarity to block residents. Implications are discussed for the development of neighboring activities and neighborhood organizations.

Reaction time measurements

Human automotive reaction-time study test measurements were carried out utilizing the facility of the Ontario Science Center, Don Mills, Ontario; Canada. The tests were carried out under simulated vehicle-driving conditions, in a mock-up that incorporated an automotive driver's seat, steering wheel, brake pedal and accelerator, utilizing background sounds typical of engine acceleration, deceleration and braking. Each subject's automotive reaction time was recorded (the average figure over a tentrial testing period), along with his sex, age, marital status, whether or not the subject had a driver's license, whether or not the subject had ever taken a course in driver's education, the number of years the subject had spent on the road, the number of moving traffic violations the subject had received, and his profession. After the entire sample of reaction-time testing data had been taken, the human automotive reaction times and individual driver characteristic variables were broken down, integrated, charted, and statistically evaluated for comparative analysis. Utilizing parameters of limitation and deletion, from approximately four hundred cases tested, two hundred and fifteen individual reaction times and driver characteristics were culled as considered representative of true testing performance. The average or mean human automotive reaction time for the population as a whole ( x ) was calculated to be 0.627 second ( n = 215), with a standard deviation (S.D.) of 0.0695 second. The human automotive reaction times and individual driver characteristic variables were further segregated into overall classifications, charted in tables, and the mean or average value reaction times were calculated for basic variable groupings. Breakdown and segregation of the data into various other classifications for analyses is facile and encouraged. Numerous relationships contained in data chartings between tables, groupings, cells, sub-cells, or combination of cells, may be observed, derived, and extracted. For rank ordering the reaction times of different subjects, classes, groupings, or sub-groupings and their characteristics, the data charting tables may also prove to be most relevant in providing a comparative basis from which observations, insights and conclusions may be drawn.