The present research aimed to assess role expectations and job performance of childcare teaching assistants at daycare centers. In order to describe participants' experiences, qualitative data were analyzed using Van Manen's phenomenological approach. The findings showed that childcare teaching assistants suffered a gap between their role expectations and reality. They felt diverse emotions and doubt about their professionalism through interactions with teachers in charge, directors, parents, and children. The participants claimed that the Nuri curriculum teaching assistants system should be improved to achieve better quality childcare programs. The implications to support the Nuri curriculum teaching assistants system were discussed in depth.

Food is a kind of unconditional element for the health and survival of humanity. Eating is the most principle desire for humans among others, which can make humans feel stability and pleasure when the desire is well satisfied. The attention to food safety is increasing and food safety accidents are happening constantly, which makes the anxiety to food safety become more serious. Especially after the WTO, the floating of food hazards between countries are increasing, which makes the problems of food safety not just limited to inland but has become a matter of common interest internationally in this liberalization era. Therefore, institutional preparation and persistent management and supervision are necessary for increasing dietary life satisfaction as well as securing food safety. Meanwhile, the consumers also need to understand and trust the food safety information, and have the ability of personally pursuing a safe diet. In this study, sentiment index about food safety and dietary satisfaction were centered on Korean consumers and the factors having an effect on dietary satisfaction were analyzed. Moreover, whether the reliance to food safety information had a moderating effect on the sensory level of food safety and satisfaction to dietary food was also confirmed. The main results were different with those concluded by J. Yun and S. Joo (2014). The sensory level of food safety was decided by the reliance to food production distribution provision safety, anxiety to food varieties, and food token. The reliance to food production distribution provision safety was lower than the average level. The anxiety to food varieties was slightly higher than the average level. The reliance to food safety information was generally lower than the medium level which showed the distrust to food safety information. The satisfaction of diet by the consumers showed a slightly lower level than the average level. In addition, the reliance to food safety information had a moderating effect on the sentiment index about food safety and dietary satisfaction. Therefore, the consumer organizations or the government should actively expand various consumer education related to food safety in order to apprehend the concrete variables which can have effects on the satisfaction of diet and transform the precise information into accurate knowledge.

This study aims to better estimate the amount of time spent for child care and to understand the characteristics of time spent for child care among employed and non-employed mothers with children under age 6 by taking concurrent activities into account. To assess time spent for child care, I differentiate child care activities into three types: primary activity without concurrent activities, primary activity with concurrent activities, and secondary activity with concurrent activities. The Major results of this study are as follows: First, employed mothers spent 145 minutes less than non-employed mothers in the total amount of time spent for child care during weekdays and this difference diminished to 62 minutes on weekends. Specifically there were differences in all types of time spent for child care among employed and non-employed mothers during weekdays, while the difference was only significant in the average amount of primary time spent for child care without concurrent activities on weekends. Second, there was no difference in the average ratio of time spent for child care with concurrent activities among employed and non-employed mothers during weekdays. By contrast, the average ratio of time spent for child care with concurrent activities of employed mothers was 5% higher than non-employed mothers on weekends. Lastly, the highest concurrent activity with child care activities was leisure followed by housework. This means that child care, leisure, and housework are somewhat related to each other among mothers.

In order to understand Korean American immigrants'adjustment to American society, it is important to understand how their life rituals and ethnic identities maintain or change over time and across immigration generations. To achieve this goal, this study examined how Korean Americans who resided in the New York City metropolitan area and New Jersey State performed life rituals and formed ethnic identities. A total of 18 Korean immigrants participated in one-on-one in-depth interviews and the interview data were analyzed with the themes. The results showed that Korean Americans performed life rituals integrating both Korean and American cultural aspects. Many Korean Americans attempted to perform life rituals based on American cultural holidays and procedures. However, a majority of these Koreans also strived to maintain Korean ethnic identities and also practice traditionally Korean life rituals as a way to preserve this ethnic identity. These findings suggest that across time and generation, Korean Americans prefer to maintain their Korean cultural identity, while not shunning the adoption of typical "American" rituals. The way that Korean Americans practice and develop identities differs very little across immigration generation. These findings provide insight on how the Korean government may support foreigners and immigrant families in South Korea and Korean Americans' acculturation processes in the U.S.

This study examined the factors that were associated with longitudinal changes for ten years from 2004 to 2014 in time spent on housework by married couples who had a preschooler as their first-born child. It also sought to figure out how much of such temporal changes were attributable to differences in the means on associated factors as well as to differences in the influence or slope of such factors. A total of 9,668 time diaries from the Korean Time Use Survey were used to analyze the influence of couple's weekly work hours, wife's relative income, couple's education and gender role attitudes on the time spent on housework of husbands and wives. Results from descriptive statistics, regression and decomposition analysis were as follows. First, women decreased, while men increased their time doing housework. Second, weekly work hours of husband and wife were related to their time doing housework in every year surveyed. Third, wife's relative earnings and couple's gender role attitudes affected wife's time doing housework more than husbands', whereas couple's education had stronger effects on husbands than wives. However, such influence was apparent on a certain survey year, and then disappeared in another, or became stronger or weaker longitudinally. Fourth, the temporal decrease in wife's housework time and increase in husband's housework time were attributable to social and cultural changes such as reduced working hours, rising female income, higher educational background, and prevalence of egalitarian gender role attitudes. Findings suggest that the trend in spending time on housework is expected to continue, and provide a timely policy implications to facilitate the change.

The study aims to investigate the effects of social anxiety and self-discrepancy on the internet game flow of adolescents, and to explore the moderating effect of self-discrepancy on the relationship between social anxiety and internet game flow. For this purpose, questionnaires on social anxiety, self-discrepancy and internet game flow were administered to 900 middle and high school students in the Gyeonggi region. The data were analyzed through frequency analysis, t-test, Pearson's correlation analysis, stepwise multiple regression analysis, and hierarchical regression analysis using SPSS Win 21. The major findings of the research are as follows. First, social anxiety and internet game flow of adolescents showed a significant difference by gender. The level of social anxiety was higher for girls than that of boys, while the level of internet game flow was higher for boys than that of girls. Self-discrepancy showed a significant difference by grade. The level of self-discrepancy was higher for middle school students than high school students. Second, self-discrepancy was the most significant predictor of the internet game flow in adolescents. Also, gender and social anxiety were significant predictors. Third, the moderating effect of self-discrepancy was found in the relationship between social anxiety and internet game flow in adolescents.

The purpose of this study was to compare the factors affecting mother's satisfaction, word-of-mouth, and repurchase intention for the complete collection and monography picture books. Questionnaires from 323 5-year-olds' mothers in Seoul and Kyunggi province were analysed. The findings are as follows. Firstly, mother's product involvement and dual readership, and child's preference for picture books were common effective factors to improve mother's satisfaction, word-of-mouth, and repurchase intention. Secondly, reflection of child's opinions explained mother's satisfaction, word-of-mouth, and repurchase intention only for the monography, not for the complete collection. Thirdly, mother's product involvement had a direct effect on the repurchase intention of monography, while mother's subjective knowledge was more important for the repurchase intention of the complete collection.

The Purpose of this study is to find the levels of keeping financial records among Korean households and to reveal the effect of keeping financial records on financial soundness of households. The 2014 Consumer Empowerment Index of the Korean consumer agency, which includes the surveyed results of 1,000 individuals, was analyzed as a secondary dataset. As a result, the following findings emerged during the study. First, 25.9% of consumers replied that they were keeping financial records. Factors associated with keeping financial records were gender and income. Women were more likely to keep financial records than men. Also, income had significant effects on keeping financial records. Second, levels of meeting percentages of financial ratios were highest in the debt to income ratio, which was 81.5%, and lowest in the investment ratio, which was 14.5%. Furthermore, 52.6% met the savings ratio, 40.6% met the emergency funds ratio, 24.6% met the retirement savings ratio. Meeting a percentage of the savings ratio did not fluctuated for 16 years, although the debt to income ratio has decreased around 15% since 1998. Third, keeping a household account book had signigicant influences on meeting percentages of financial ratios. Magnitudes of effects ranged between 1.4-1.8 odds, which were as much as the income effects. In summary, effects of keeping financial records were evidenced in this study. It is suggested that the importance of keeping financial records should be stressed in financial education and counseling programs.

This study focuses on the differences in family values, which is a cause of family dissolution and conflicts of marriage immigrant women. This study was conducted on 441 women in Vietnam. It was done to explore their family values. Specifically, the following were examined: the overall family values and martial status of Vietnamese women; differences in their family values by region (northern, central, southern). The survey questionnaire consists of the following content: 'family perception'; 'gender-role values'; 'elderly parent support value'. The characteristics of family values of Vietnamese women are as follows. First, the scope of family perceived by them was relatively narrow. In particular, most of them didn't perceive the parents of a spouse as a familymember. Second, in terms of gender-roles, they perceived men and women as equal and didn't have strong perception of traditional gender roles. Third, they felt strongly about supporting elderly parents. The perception of supporting elderly parents is based on equal gender roles, instead of the paternalistic approach. They preferred financial support to living with parents. There were also differences in family values by region. Also, their values seemed to be the opposite of the ones well-known by region. In addition, their values were changing amid economic growth and modernization. Residents in Can Tho in the south - known to have open-minded Southeast Asian values - had the most patrilineal, traditional values with strong perception towards supporting elderly parents. Residents in Hanoi in the north - known to have heavy influence of Confucian culture - had non-traditional values with positive attitude towards liberal sex culture, divorce, and remarriage. Residents in Da Nang, a central region, had a mixture of northern and southern characteristics in terms of family values.

Multicultural Family Support Centers (MFSC) have provided five program areas including family, gender equality, human rights, social integration, and counseling since 2015. It is important to examine the MFSC staff's perceptions of the family programs and program needs for multicultural families to improve the effectiveness of these programs. In this study, we aim to explore the staff's perceptions of the family programs and to assess multicultural family program needs based on the family life cycle. A total of 130 MFSC staff were recruited through 128 MFSCs across Korea. Descriptive statistics were conducted for data analysis. Our findings revealed that MFSC staff have increasingly recognized that their target audiences are not only marriage immigrants and their families but also foreign workers' families and families from North Korea. In addition, the MFSC staff identified the importance of family programs instead of only programs for individual family members and multicultural families' different program needs based on their family life cycle. Contrary to the positive perception of the family programs, they described challenges of the family programs including a shortage of funds, difficulty recruiting family member combinations (e.g., couples, parent-child) for family programs, a lack of a program manual, and a heavy workload. This study provides insights into the family programs including their development and delivery.