title: Time Spent in Home Care Tasks Related to Ownership and Uses of Home Care Equipment
Creators: name: Nilson, Jeena C. H.
Publisher: name: Utah State University
Year: 1981

description: The data for this research were taken from Utah's contribution to the regional research project "An Interstate Comparison of Urban/Rural Families' Time Use." Data were collected between May 1977 and August 1978 from 210 two-parent/ two-child families.
This thesis research studied the relationship between ownership and use of nine selected household appliances and time spent on the related housekeeping tasks for 208 of the families studied. Statistical analysis was done using t-tests for comparisons of time spent on the related task by owners and non-owners of each appliance. Analysis of variance was used to compare time spent on combined activities with ownership of differing numbers of appliances . The relationship between frequency of use and time spent on tasks was measured us ing the Pearson Product Moment correlation.
The hypotheses tested were:
1. Ownership of home care equipment is not related to the amount of time spent in home care tasks.
2. Reported use of home care equipment is not related to the amount of time spent in home care tasks.
Hypothesis Number 1 was accepted for all relationships tested with the exception of the dishwasher and time spent in dishwashing and the sewing machine and time spent in construction of clothing and household linens. The results indicated that the homemakers who owned a dishwasher spent less time in dishwashing than did non-owners.
This was not true of the spouses, who spent very little time in dishwashing under either circumstance. The homemakers who owned a sewing machine spent considerably more time in construction of clothing and household linens than non-owners. When families were grouped by the number of appliances owned , no statistically significant relationships were found to exist between the number of appliances owned and the total time spent in home care tasks. Generally, those who owned many or few of the appliances spent more time in home care activities than did owners of four or five of the appliances.
Hypothesis Number 2 was rejected for the relationships between dishwasher use and spouse time spent in dishwashing, sewing machine use and homemaker time spent in construction of clothing and household linens and use of power yard equipment and time spent in maintenance of home, yard, car and pets. The number of times the dishwasher was reported to have been used was related to the amount of time spent in dishwashing by spouses although the time was very limited. The lime spent in clothing and household linen construction increased with the number of times the sewing machine was used. This relationship would have been expected. Those who used their power yard equipment more often spent more time in maintenance of home, yard, car and pets. This was true for both the borne makers and the spouses. 
The assumed relationship between appliance ownership and use and time spent on home care activities was not found to exist for most appliances. The time savings potential of appliances had not been realized. The time spent on most tasks did not differ significantly between owners and non-owners, or by the reported number of times used.