Browsing by Author "Puska, Kristiina"

Aims. Household cleaning has not been studied in recent years. The first aim of this study was to gain up to date information about household cleaning practices and attitudes. The second aim was to type people's cleaning habits by analyzing their cleaning practices. The third aim was to find out whether people need additional information about household cleaning. The research questions were: 1) What kind of cleaning practises do households have? 1.1) Is it possible to type people's cleaning practices? 2) What kind of attitudes towards cleaning do people have? 3) Do people need additional information about household cleaning? Methods. An internet questionnaire was used to collect the data. The questionnaire contained structured questions and one open question. The questionnaire was answered by 2797 respondents. The data was analyzed by using the SPSS-software. The description of the data was carried out by studying frequencies. Quantitative methods used in this study were the one-way analysis of variance and the exploratory factor analysis. The open question was analyzed qualitatively by using classification. Results and conclusions. By studying cleaning practices two types of cleaning frequencies were found. The first one was maintenance cleaning carried out often and the second one was basic cleaning done more rarely. Different cleaner types for example habit-oriented and easy-going cleaners could be found by studying cleaning practices. By analyzing the respondents' cleaning attitudes a segmentation into clean-oriented cleaners and order-oriented cleaners could be made. Environmentally friendly cleaning was one of the subjects on which people wanted to get additional information. The time spent on cleaning in households is 1–4 hours per week. In two thirds of the households cleaning was primarily carried out by a female family member. Cleaning practices are largely inherited from childhood home. Cleaning practices are influenced by environmental factors, social environment, society's cleaning standards, values, norms and personal attitudes. The results of this study can be used in home economics teaching as well as in organizations providing household cleaning advice.