Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design, Department of

 

First Advisor

Katherine Polston

Second Advisor

Jennifer Johnson Jorgensen

Third Advisor

Michael James

Date of this Version

Spring 4-20-2017

Document Type

Thesis

Comments

A THESIS Presented to the Faculty of The Graduate College at the University of Nebraska In Partial Fulfillment of Requirements For the Degree of Master of Arts, Major: Textiles, Merchandising, and Fashion Design, Under the Supervision of Professor Katherine Polston. Lincoln, NE: April, 2017

Copyright (c) 2017 Khadijah Baaqil

Abstract

A review of existing literature demonstrates the need for additional research on female home-based business owners. This study aimed to partially fill the literature gap by exploring the demographic profile of female home-based textile-design bloggers, a unique segment of the female home-based business world.

The findings of the qualitative content analysis of the 30 designers’ blogs and 138 blog posts included the findings of their age, nationality and ethnic identity, current place of residence, family status, educational background, occupation, and socioeconomic status. These findings were then reduced into numbers and percentages. Findings of the analysis show that designers vary from implicitly or explicitly posting their demographic information; some designers are very up front about who they are while others are less revealing and their information must be obtained by inference.

The findings highlighted the fact that designers were more open to discussing their parental status than their marital status, both under the category of family status. On the other hand, age and income were rarely shared openly. Analysis of blog content found that of the designers that publicized work information (n=27), the majority (n=23) only own and operate a home-based business, while a few (n=4) had a day job outside of the house in addition to their HBB. The findings show that designers mostly (n=7) have informal education in design as opposed to a college or university degree (n=4). Findings also demonstrate that the use of e-commerce and other tools such as CAD are indispensable to home-based textile designers.

Advisor: Katherine Polston

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