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Henry, Weber, and Yarbrough (2001), writing in this Journal, reported that many college students are living on the verge of a financial crisis. The purpose of this study was to further consider this assertion by examining college students’ credit card use behavior and attitudes. A concurrent purpose was to test the factors associated with students’ attitude toward credit cards. It was determined that, using a sample of 242 undergraduate and graduate students from a southwestern state university, Ethnic/racial background, academic level, credit card ownership, parents’ credit card use, money ethic, and locus of control were associated with college students’ credit card attitudes. Henry et al.’s assertion that students are vulnerable to a financial crisis was confirmed.

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College students’ use of credit cards has recently received increased visibility throughout the media (Hayhoe, 2002). Henry, Weber, and Yarbrough (2001), writing in this Journal, concluded that in addition to credit problems many students do not have a written budget, and of those who do have a budget few young people actually use it. They determined that university students “are vulnerable to financial crisis” (p. 246).

The staggering number of credit cards in circulation exemplifies this crisis, as does the number of cards carried by the average student. Currently, there are 1.3 billion credit cards in circulation, which, when averaged, equals about 12 cards per household (Sullivan, Warren, & Westbrook, 2000). The growth of credit cards on college campuses has tended to minor the credit saturation found in the general public (Xiao, Noring, & Anderson, 1995). More than a decade ago Churaman (1988) reported on college students’ use of consumer credit. It was during this period that the banking industry began permeating the student credit card market in the late 1980’s (Manning, 2000). Churaman reported that in 1985-86 over half of all college students had bank credit cards. This figure has been on the rise as some 70% of all undergraduates at four-year colleges have at least one credit card today.

The increased number and type of credit cards on university campuses has seen an explosive level of growth in the past decade, with most credit card companies targeting college students. What remains still unanswered is what effect credit card circulation among college students has had on the financial attitudes, behaviors, and outcomes of young Americans.

The purpose of this paper is to extend the research originally reported by Henry et al. (2001) by reporting findings from a study that was designed to examine college students’ credit card use behavior and identify the factors associated with credit attitudes. This research also identifies the factors related to college students’ attitudes toward credit cards. Attitude toward credit was assumed to be explained with demographic characteristics, socioeconomic characteristics, background factors, and psychological factors.

Methodology

A survey data collection method was used. Questionnaires were distributed to randomly selected classes offered in the College of Human Sciences of one large university in a southwestern state. From the total of 250 questionnaires that were distributed, 242 questionnaires were returned. The survey instrument included questions regarding debit card usage, credit card usage, attitudes toward credit, financial knowledge, demographic characteristics, and other personal finance attitude and behavior.

Attitude toward credit was measured with nine questions adapted from a study by Awh and Waters (1974). Each item was measured with a 4-point Likert-type-type scale that ranged from strongly agree (4) to strongly disagree (1). A summated index was created for use in the multivariate analyses. Those who had higher scores on the attitude toward credit scale were assumed to have a more positive credit attitude. Possible scores ranged from 9 to 36. The mean score for the respondents was 20.94. The reliability coefficient of the index was .8256 (Table 1).

In this study it was hypothesized that credit card possession and use is most likely influenced by four factors: (a) demographic characteristics (e.g., age, gender, marital status); (b) socioeconomic factors (e.g., income, education, and other indices of socioeconomic status); (c) background characteristics (e.g., life events, childhood experiences); and (d) psychological characteristics (e.g., locus of control, self-esteem, materialism)(Churaman, 1988; Davies & Lea, 1995; Tokunaga, 1993). A total of five demographic characteristics were examined: Age, gender, ethnic/racial background, marital status, and birth order. Age was measured at the interval level and considered to be a continuous variable. Gender, ethnic/racial background, marital status, and birth order were dummy coded. Those who were male, White/Caucasian, never married, or first and the only child were coded 1, otherwise, all other categories were 0.

Income, housing situation, employment status, and education were included as socioeconomic factors. Student personal income was measured with an interval scale, which ranged from none to above $10,000. Housing situation was dummy coded. Those who lived off-campus were coded 1 (78.5%), otherwise 0. Employment status was also dummy coded. Those who were employed either full or part-time were assigned 1, otherwise 0. Two education measures were used in this study: Academic level and academic major. Academic level was considered an interval level variable: (1) freshman, (2) sophomore, (3) junior, (4) senior, and (5) graduate student. Academic major was dummy coded. Those who were enrolled in a human sciences college (i.e., child development, family studies, food and nutrition, family and consumer sciences education, restaurant and hotel management, merchandising, family financial planning, and interior design) were assigned 1, otherwise 0.

Aflatbed truck pulling out of Hayward lumberyard in Salinas, California, carries familiar-looking building materials–siding, insulation, studs, and beams–destined for a home construction site. But something is different. The siding is wood-textured fiber cement, the insulation is made of salvaged cotton blue jeans, and the studs are certified to be from a sustainably harvested forest. Resource- and environmentally friendly building–also known as green building–is gaining popularity in the West. Now even the commonest materials such as carpet and paint have green options and are being competitively priced.

Green building is about reducing environmental impact, whether in remodeling a home or planning a community. It’s everything from energy-efficient and health-conscious design to using salvaged materials. There’s no “green” architectural style, either, so you can still follow your personal taste when it comes to creating your home’s look. Here’s our guide to using earth-friendly materials.

Respectful remodel

Resourceful

The story of Kristin and Kenan Block’s renovation of a 1904 Seattle home is one of research, road trips, and recycling. Their goal was to add a master bedroom on a new third floor and to extend and remodel the kitchen on the first. They wanted to keep all of the new features in character with the age of the house and specified that the remodel be as green as possible.

From the front, the new third floor is simply a gabled extension of the dormer. Serendipity and a collector’s eye were key elements in outfitting the interior. The Blocks found the long kitchen sink at a salvage shop during a vacation in Vermont, and they lugged back the folding train-compartment sink–the highlight of the guest bathroom–from a Portland store called Rejuvenation, which specializes in salvage, house parts, and reproduction lighting.

Most of the interior and exterior materials are recycled or salvaged, including the beams, fir flooring (which was remilled), siding, cabinets, sinks, bathtubs, decorative sash windows, antique leaded glass, and interior doors.

Kristin sums up: “I think we saved money buying recycled products, but we sometimes spent more trying to get them installed.”

DESIGN: J.A.S. Design-Build, Seattle (www.jasdesignbuild.com or 206/547-6242)

Building a new home

9. Hydronic radiant floor heater

Energy-wise

When visitors walk down the driveway to the front door of Marilee Rasmussen’s two-story 1,500-square-foot house in Palo Alto, California, they also stride over the home’s heat source. Beneath the payers is a geothermal heating system: its four 200-foot-deep wells contain a loop of pipes to circulate water heated by the low-grade warmth of the earth. The water, which is warmed to about 550, returns to a series of heat pumps that extract and boost heat and distribute it to a hydronic radiant floor-heating system, a water heater, and the heater for a narrow lap pool.

After losing its heat, the water recirculates within the in-ground pipes to be warmed by the mass of the earth. Going geothermal required a significant investment, but a local government incentive on heat pumps, along with the system’s ability to serve both house and pool, made the installation worthwhile.

With the exception of a small guest bathroom, the main floor is one open living and cooking space that pivots around a central stairway. The radiant-heated floor works especially well in tall spaces like this because it heats objects and does not rely on forced air. Two bedrooms are upstairs.

DESIGN: Cartmell/Tam Architects, Los Altos Hills, GA (650/948-6930)

Anatomy of green

Earth-friendly home

This idealized house doesn’t trumpet its greenness to the neighborhood. Regardless of architectural style or size, it’s the shell of a house–the foundation, walls, windows, and roof–that provides the greatest energy and resource savings. The surprise is that in terms of energy efficiency, there’s nothing wrong with wood-framed houses. They just have to be built correctly.

Alternative building systems such as straw bales, rammed earth, and structural insulated panels (SIPs) offer resource and energy efficiency. However, they are slightly more expensive than conventional wood-framed systems and are less utilized by mainstream builders.

Natural materials are often better for the environment, but not always: for example, fiber-cement siding uses minimal wood fiber, is more durable, and offers lower maintenance costs than real wood siding.

Resource guide

First steps

Although the number of environmentally friendly options is growing, finding them can still require legwork. Here are some shortcuts.

Seattle’s Environmental Home Center www.environmentalhomecenter.com or 800/281-9785; mail order available) and Environmental Building Supplies in Portland (www.ecohaus.com or 503/222-3881; no mail orders) carry alternative countertop materials. certified lumber for flooring, natural bedding, and plumbing supplies. Real Goods, a catalog company headquartered in Hopland, California (www. realgoods.com or 800/919-2400), sells a wide range of ecological products from bedding to lighting.

I have a theory on doing business. If my business is good, it’s not because of the weather, the time of year or the economy. It’s because of me. I’m doing something right. If my business is bad, it’s not because of the weather, the time of the year or the economy. It’s because of me. I’m doing something wrong. Somebody is always buying something from somebody, so how can I make them buy from me?

First of all, you need confidence in yourself and your merchandise with clear goals and knowledge of the products you are selling. Only then can you inspire dedication from your staff and a willingness to buy from customers.

Successful business people, no matter what their industry, have been found to share similar traits. Today’s world is no longer satisfied with simply success–we want to know how the successful get to the top. The Russians developed a concept called “anthropomaximology,” in which they try to answer the question of why some individuals outperform others. Through the years I’ve done some anthropomaximology of my own and found there are certain qualities that describe successful business people. Here are a few:

1 They constantly set higher goals Successful business people are mountain climbers who, having climbed one peak, look beyond to the next highest. They are the retailers who send 1,500 mailers to their customers and yield a good turnout of 100. But instead of being satisfied with 100, they ask how they can increase that number to 150 the next time.

For example, Donald Kelley of Kelley Frame and Art Galleries, with locations in Minnesota and Wisconsin, continually tries to improve his e-mail list. “My goal is to collect 150 new e-mail names every month and send out a new e-mail message to this list every two weeks.”

2 They avoid “comfort zones” To a successful person, standing still feels like going backwards. People who stay in their comfort zones do what they did before because it’s “the way we’ve always done it:” They run the same ads, buy the same merchandise in the same way and avoid anything new, different or unusual because they feel they might do something wrong. They blame any lack of business on the weather, the time of the year, the economy–anything except for themselves.

Successful gallery owners attend art shows, read catalogs and visit other galleries in their travels. They are always searching to find unique art exclusive to their galleries. They take control of their own destiny and market their businesses as exciting destinations.

3 They are driven by accomplishments, not money

Successful people follow the theory of Apple Computer’s founder Steve Jobs, who said, “The journey is the reward.” They are customer focused, not product focused. Their thrill is not the ringing of the register but the crowds responding to their mailing. For them, there is no greater high than a line outside the store before the doors open.

4 They solve problems rather than place blame

A telephone pole blocked the view of Ron Bishop’s Canadian gallery. He knew it would be difficult, if not impossible, to have the telephone pole moved. His solution was to paint the pole with an Impressionistic theme. Once it was finished, the local paper came, took a picture and wrote a story about it. “It was great publicity,” said Bishop. “And then the calls started coming, asking, ‘Is it for sale?’”

Successful gallery owners do not waste their time looking at problems and saying, “It’s not our fault” or “Why didn’t we …” They say, “Let’s look at what went wrong and realize it was a learning experience and figure out how we can make it work next time.”

When a customer hears it will take a week or longer to have their art framed, and says, “Sorry, that’s too long,” do you shrug your shoulders and say, “Well, that’s how long it takes.” Or do you think, “Hmmmm, if that’s what the customer wants, how can I solve their problem?”

5 They look at the worst possible scenario

“What’s the worst possible result if we follow this plan?” they ask themselves. Then, knowing that, they decide if the risk-taking is practical.

However, once they make the decision, they proceed with the confidence, knowledge and expertise necessary to make it work.

They understand the most harmful result and then decide if they can live with the outcome. If they can, they move ahead. Confidently.

Galleries that concentrate on one type of art often decide to reach into an unrelated area. Sometimes a gallery will fail in an attempt to broaden their focus, but successful performers understand even defeat is a learning experience.

“Every time I fail,” said Thomas Edison, “I learn something.” He tried 1,114 times to find a filament to stay lit in a bulb. He failed 1,113 times.

6 They rehearse the future as they see it

“I believe our future is a one-stop shop for decorating. In addition to limited-edition prints and posters, we now offer collectibles, gift items and small occasional furniture pieces,” said Christine Knoll of the Art Gallery of Hog Hollow in Chesterfield, Mo.

How the proliferation of upstream devices has made them necessary

FOR A MOTOR, “RATED CURrent” means only a couple of clearly defined numbers: full-load amperes, and locked-rotor amperes. Except under certain transient conditions, those are the only two values of importance to the application. With upstream switching, control, and protection devices, however, it’s not so simple.

A motor is an end-of-the-line energy sink. The only current flowing to it is what results from the applied voltage and motor internal impedance. In contrast, a circuit breaker, fuse, or switch -as well as the conductors themselves-is subjected to whatever a downstream load (or a circuit fault) may demand. Hence, such devices can have several different current ratings depending upon the nature of that load.

The basic rating is continuous current, the value of amperes intended to flow through the device. (This is sometimes described as “operational current” or “thermal current.”) When we speak of a “100 ampere fuse,” for example, we mean that a load drawing 100 amperes continuous current is the maximum for which that fuse is intended to provide fault protection. How long is “continuous”? “More than three hours,” according to one definition.

Although we tend to think of “inductive” and “resistive” circuits as two separate entities, the distinction is only one of degree. Whether a-c or d-c, all real circuits contain both resistance and inductance. Opening a current-carrying circuit will therefore always result in an arc across the opening contacts. How intense-and therefore how damaging-that arc may be depends upon the relationship between resistance and inductance, expressed by the circuit power factor.

As long as the current (and therefore the arc intensity) does not exceed a design level, a fuse or circuit breaker will snuff out the arc before too much damage is done. Current at that point is the interrupting capability of the device. Sometimes called the breaking current, it will far exceed the basic “continuous current rating.”

It’s often assumed that this is the amount of current that will actually cause the fuse or breaker to open the circuit. That’s not the case. As the National Electrical Code explains, in Article 100, this rating is “The highest current at rated voltage that a device is intended to interrupt under standard test conditions.” Those test conditions are outlined in UL standards. Suppose a voltage source can theoretically supply 50,000 amperes to a short-circuit. The complete circuit including that fault must have an impedance that includes the connecting wire from the power source to the breaker being tested, and that impedance will reduce the actual current the breaker sees during the test to something less than 50,000 amperes. Thus, there may be no contradiction in applying a circuit breaker tested to “only” 40,000 amperes, for example, in a power system capable of supplying 50,000 short-circuit amperes (see Figure 1 for typical relationship).

Two different interrupting ratings may be assigned. In a medium-voltage power circuit breaker, for example, the full magnitude of electromagnetic stress exists immediately upon initiation of a fault. That imposes a short-time or momentary current limit, such as 60,000 amperes for a 1200 ampere unit. The thermal stress accumulates with time, leading to a lower interrupting current limit of 35,000 amperes. (Low-voltage breakers operate so quickly that this duality does not exist.)

Whenever abnormally high current flows through a circuit component, that component is subject to two kinds of damage. The first is the combination of thermal stress and mechanical force created by the flow of current. Depending upon the device and the applicable standard (usually UL or NEMA), a withstand rating exists to define the maximum amperes that can flow without causing such damage to the device itself. Any switch or contactor not intended to clear a fault must have a withstand rating with which upstream protective device behavior must be coordinated.

Interestingly, if you look up withstand rating in the index to the National Electrical Code, in the IEEE Dictionary, in power system design literature, or in industry standards for various devices, you won’t find the term listed. One definition of this rating is: “the ability … to withstand the let through energy of a short circuit protective device under fault conditions. . . .” Some documents do mention surge voltage withstand, which has nothing to do with current.

Adding confusion to all this is the wording of one UL control equipment standard in which a table of “interrupting current” values is referred to in the text as “withstand values.”

A second source of damage to any switching device (and its surroundings) is contact arcing. This applies only to devices intended to open the circuit either when a fault exists or when a control function dictates either opening a closed current-carrying contact, or closing an open one in a “live” circuit.

IT organizations have been caught between a rock and a hard place. Charged with protecting their company’s information, IT organizations have established aggressive service level agreements (SLAs) that impact the manner in which they implement data protection by setting recovery point objectives (RPO) and recovery time objectives (RTO).

Organizations struggle with shrinking or non-existent backup windows, the need to recover quickly, often to a specific point in time, and even meeting compliance or regulatory guidelines. Backing up to tape is no longer adequate; not only is it difficult to administer for backups and recoveries, but it lacks the speed, reliability, flexibility and simplicity IT needs to meet stringent SLAs. Backing up to disk using virtual tape emulation or virtual tape libraries also falls short as the administration of the solution is tape-centric and schedule driven. Add in the explosion of data, along with the challenge of protecting remote offices, and you have the challenge facing many of today’s business–with IT sitting on the front lines of aligning business needs with today’s technology.

As a result, a growing number of IT organizations are augmenting their traditional backup and recovery strategies with continuous data protection (CDP) solutions. CDP dramatically improves RPOs and RTOs while eliminating backup windows. What’s more, CDP not only reduces the need for tape in the backup and recovery process but it also makes recovery easy enough that users can often recover their own files, without help from IT.

What is CDP?

CDP is a process that lets organizations continuously capture or track data modifications and stores changes independent of the primary data, enabling recovery points from specific points in the past. CDP systems may be block, file-, or application-based and can provide fine granularities of restorable objects to infinitely variable recovery points in time.

CDP reduces the complexity of the data protection system and eliminates the classic challenge of theing backup window because it eliminates the need for full, incremental, or differential backups by protecting data immediately and then continuously backing it up to disk. CDP is not a complete replacement for traditional backup but rather an important component of a well-rounded backup and recovery strategy.

Can CDP be leveraged for backing up and recovering email? As the predominant form of communication for business transactions, email is an application that is mission-critical to organizations of all sizes. It generates a huge amount of information that must be immediately available and protected. The loss of a single message may generate hours of unnecessary and frustrating labor for administrators and/or users and can lower productivity or affect business operations. And with the introduction of Exchange 2007, organizations need protective solutions that can support the latest offering from Microsoft.

Not surprisingly, the amount of email data requiring protection and availability is growing exponentially. IT, in turn, is faced with the challenge of backing up this critical data within the existing backup window and recovering it quickly. Moreover, they must not only be able to back up and recover whole email databases but they also require a system which enables recovery of individual mailboxes or emails. However, if administrators want to back up email databases for complete disaster recovery purposes and be able to recover individual email, folders, or mailboxes, they typically have had to do separate backups.

New granular recovery technologies have emerged that enable mail messages, mailboxes, and folders to be restored individually without having to restore an entire email database, and without separate and redundant mailbox backups. In an Exchange environment, for example, only a single-pass full or incremental backup of Exchange is required, which dramatically decreases the time required to protect all mailboxes while also reducing the backup storage requirement.

CDP significantly streamlines backup and recovery of email by completely eliminating the need to perform scheduled daily email backups, and speeding recovery, thereby delivering email continuity for businesses.

How does CDP enable end users to recover their own data?

Because CDP is a disk-based protection and recovery solution, it is possible to enable end users to retrieve their own data. Some CDP solutions provide this type of functionality; some utilizing a simple Web interface that requires no training and enables end users to retrieve previous versions of files without contacting IT. Empowering end users to retrieve their own data frees up IT to focus on other business-critical needs of the organization.

With these self-service recovery solutions, retrieving lost, corrupted, or overwritten data is as easy as searching for and downloading a file from the Internet. There is no backup tape to locate or load and no additional information to restore to find the correct file. Best of all, these solutions do not require the installation of client software or agents on individual desktops laptops, and a familiar web paradigm requires no additional training. Users need only a standard Web browser, making data retrieval easier than ever.