• Journal of Life Science
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.304-313
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• 2010

Out of the tenth graders of K girl's high school in J city, 24 students whose %fat was over 30% were divided into 3 groups through Purposing Sampling. Groups A and B were exercise groups and C was the control group. Using Borg's RPE (rating of perceived exertion), RPE 15-17 (hard-very hard) $\times$ 3 sets were set up for group A, RPE 11-13 (fairly light-somewhat hard) $\times$ 3 sets were set up for group B, and both groups performed step aerobics (step box: 68cm in length, 28cm in width, 15cm in hight, 450g in weight) for 50-60 minutes a day, 3 days a week for 8 weeks in total. This research was conducted to find out the effects of various RPE in step aerobics on the immunologic function (neutrophil, lymphocyte, monocyte, eosinophil, basophil, IgG, IgA, and IgM levels) of overweight female high school students. By using SPSS Ver. 14.0, a repeated two-way ANOVA was conducted to find out the effects of interaction between the groups and time period, paired t-test to evaluate data within each group, and pre- and post experiment difference rates (%diff) to perform one-way ANOVA for group comparisons. The following results were found. As for WBC, within group A, neutrophil, monocyte, basophil, and eosinophil levels increased, while lymphocyte levels remained the same. Within group B, eosinophil levels decreased while neutrophil, lymphocyte, monocyte, and basophil levels showed no differences. Within the control group, neutrophil, basophil, and eosinophil levels decreased while lymphocyte and monocyte levels showed no differences. As for the group comparisons, neutrophil levels increased more in group A than group B and the control group. There were no differences in lymphocyte levels among the three groups. Monocyte levels increased more in group A and B than the control group. Basophil and Eosinophil increased more in group A than group B and the control group. As for immunoglobin, within group A, the IgG level increased but the levels of IgA and IgM did not change. Within group B, the IgA level increased but the level of IgG decreased, and the level of IgM did not change. Within the control group, the IgG level decreased but the levels of IgA and IgM did not change. As for the group comparisons, the level of IgA increased more in group A than the control group, and the level of IgG increased more in group A than group B and the control group, but levels of IgM among the three groups did not show any difference. In summary, WBC and Ig levels showed that the three groups remained at the reference interval even after the exercise program. However, group A, which performed RPE 15-17 in step aerobics, showed increase in more measured items than the other groups, and this implies that the immunologic function has improved in the range of the reference intervals. Therefore, it will be effective to conduct step aerobics with the RPE 15-17 (hard-very hard) in order to increase the immunologic function.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.29-36
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• 2012

Research on subjective well-being (SWB) has flourished in recent years. As SWB determines cognitive and motivational processes, including social comparison and cognitive dissonance, it determines how consumers make decisions, including the comparison and evaluation of alternatives. Considering that the comparison and evaluation of alternatives is related to social comparison and cognitive dissonance, the influence of SWB on the comparison and evaluation of alternatives needs to be investigated. This research aims to examine the effect of SWB on the comparison and evaluation of alternatives, especially when people acquire additional information about their chosen or non-chosen alternatives, leading to a change of absolute/relative value of alternatives. The reasonable price of an alternative as evaluated by individuals is used as a measure reflecting the perceived value of an alternative. Putting all of this together, the current study intended to investigate the influence of absolute and relative value on the reasonable price of an alternative depending on SWB. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two experiment groups (deterioration of non-chosen alternative vs. improvement of non-chosen alternative). After reading consumer report ratings of alternatives shown on monitor screens, participants chose one of the alternatives, followed by the change of the consumer report ratings (deterioration of non-chosen alternative vs. improvement of non-chosen alternative). Participants evaluated the reasonable price of their chosen alternative based on the provided price of the non-chosen alternative. Two weeks after the experiment, they were asked to answer survey questionnaire on SWB measures. A regression was performed on the reasonable price with experiment groups, mean-centered SWB, and their interaction. There was a significant simple effect of groups and SWB. More importantly, these effects were qualified by the predicted interaction of groups and SWB. To interpret this interaction further, simple slope tests were performed on the price when SWB was centered at one standard deviation above (i.e., happy people) and below (i.e., unhappy people) the mean. As predicted, happy people rated the reasonable price of the chosen alternative higher in the improvement of non-chosen alternative group than in the deterioration of non-chosen alternative group. Conversely, unhappy people showed no price difference between groups. These results show that happy people pay attention to the absolute value of the alternative, whereas unhappy people give more weight to the relative value as well as to the absolute value of a chosen alternative, indicating that unhappy people are more sensitive to the negative information of a non-chosen alternative compared to happy people. The present research expanded the existing research stream on SWB by showing the influence of SWB on the consumers' evaluation of alternatives. Furthermore, this study adds to previous research on SWB and social comparison by suggesting that unhappy people tend to be more sensitive to negative social comparison information of alternatives even when a target of social comparison is not explicitly present. Moreover, these results yield some managerial implications on how to provide product information based on SWB in order to make products more attractive among the alternatives available to consumers.