Browsing by Author "Mäkipää, Juulia"

This study aims to increase knowledge about benefits of hobby crafts. In previous studies, hobby crafts have been described e.g. as an empowering element in an unsure modern society, a developer of thinking skills, a way to express belonging to a community or a culture, or a therapy tool. The goal of this research was to measure how much people experience different benefits described in literature from hobby crafts. The goal was also to form larger benefit groups of single benefits and find out differences in experiencing them between people of different ages, of different lengths of experience, who use different craft techniques or craft process, and who evaluate their skills level different. The research method chosen was online questionnaire survey, and the link to the questionnaire was shared in social media. There were 1754 respondents. Nine benefit components combining different single benefits were identified using principal component analysis. The principal component analysis was followed by analysis of variance to find out which groups differed from each other in experiencing each benefit component. Nine benefit components were found in the study: Developing process and creative skills, Independence and empowerment, Health and therapeutic benefits, Learning craft skills, Experientiality, creative expression and joy, Social benefits, Practical product benefits, Developing perseverance and Pride and joy of the product. Statistically significant small or medium size differences between different groups were found in all benefit components. Among others, the following conclusions were presented. The results support using holistic craft process in school crafts: more process and creative skills development was experienced from holistic craft process than from partial one. Guiding students to become aware of learning these skills is recommended. The results highlight health and therapeutic benefits, and benefits of independence and empowerment, as additions to the classifications of meanings of craft presented in previous literature. In experiencing health and therapy benefits, people using other techniques but sewing were highlighted, as was age group 35–49 and ones following instructions in their craft process. Benefits of independence and empowerment were especially experienced on the contrary by people sewing, aged between 50–64 and the ones who designed their crafts themselves. The differences are good to be noted when planning courses or therapy for different needs. Experiencing social benefits was strongly highlighted among people aged 50 or more. Gathering together doing crafts can be a good way to prevent loneliness among the aging people.