Enhancing Clothing Maintenance Practices among Families in Enugu State

Abstract

This study is aimed at enhancing clothing maintenance practices among families in Enugu state. Specifically, the study was conducted to determine the clothing renovation practices adopted by rural and urban families; Clothing repair practices adopted by literate and illiterate families; Laundry practices adopted by families; Clothing storage practices adopted by males and females; Problems encountered with clothing maintenance practices and; Ways of solving the problems encountered with clothing maintenance practices among families. The study adopted a descriptive survey research design. The population for the study was 366, 670 which consisted of all the homemakers within the age range of 30 -50 years in Enugu State. Sampling was done. A multi stage sampling techniques was adopted in the selection of respondents for the study. In the first stage, one zone out of the three zones of the state was randomly selected. The selected zone was Enugu East. At the second stage, out of the six local government areas that make up the zone, three local government areas was randomly selected. Third stage, one local government area was randomly selected out of the selected three local government areas. At the fourth stage, from the selected local government, six urban areas and four rural areas were randomly selected for the study. The urban areas are: Ugwuagor, UgboOwa, Housing Eastate, Ugbene, Trans Ekulu, and Ugboezeji. The four rural areas are Amaoji Nike, Alulu, Nkwo Nike, and Edem Nike. At the fifth stage, from each selected area, thirty homemakers was purposively selected from four groups of homemakers namely; teachers, civil servants, traders and entrepreneurs. This gives a total of three hundred homemakers which were involved in the study. A structured questionnaire of 107 items were developed for the study through an extensive literature review. The research instrument was subjected to face validation by three experts all from university of Nigeria, Nsukka. The reliability coefficient of the instrument for the study was 0.91 which was calculated using Cronbach Alpha reliability test. The questionnaire was administered by personal contact and with the help of two research assistants. Three hundred copies of the questionnaire were dully completed and returned. The collected questionnaire were analysed using mean and standard deviation. T-test was used to test the hypotheses at an alpha level of 0.05. Based on the findings, it was concluded that; families in Enugu State do not adopt renovation practices in their clothing maintenance. Also many families are ignorant of certain repair, laundry and storage practices. Recommendations were made which includes, that government should sponsor a programme through media that will enlighten the families on the need for maintaining their clothing and the consequences of lack of it. Government agencies such as (SON) and (CPA) should work in collaboration to ensure quality product used in clothing maintenance at affordable prices among others.