A comparative study of general values and clothing behavior of college female students in Korea and America.

한국과 미국 여대생의 가치관과 의복선택행동에 관한 비교연구

It is generallybelieved that the values of female students are different depending on the cultural enviromment of society. The purpose of this paper is to discern the value orientation of female students in Korea and America, and how they are related to the clothing behavior. 300 female students were selected as sample from the Univ. of Minnesota and 158 students filled out the questionnair. 420 female students were selected from five unversities in Jinju, Taegy and Pusan. RESULTS : 1) Korean students had highly evaluated theaethetic, political, religious and social values, and American students had higher evaluation on the economic and American students had higher evaluation on the economic and theoretical values. 2) Korean students tended to regard modesty, conformity and management as important factors when they chose new clothes, and for American students, appearance and tool were important. 3) The impact of values on clothing vehavior was as follows. a) Korean students who emphasized theoretical values did not use clothes as an instrument of status symbol and modesty. b) American students who emphasized the economic values tended to have an interest in purchase and wearing of clothes on purpose. c) Korean students who had positive attitudes on the aethetic values tended to be conservative, but they wanted to use the clothes as a demonstration of self exaggeraton. d) Korean students who regarded social values important tended to have a higher interest in the management of clothes. e) Korean students who had highly evaluated the religious values tended to be conservative when the selected new clothes. American students did not want to conform to the group norm when they chose new clothes. On the whole, American students did not put on clothes to achieve a specific goal. In short, it can be concluded that Korean students and American students have different values and they have a great impact on their clothing behavior.