Life Patterns Study, 1982

The purpose of this study was to examine how women's increased access to colleges and graduate schools in the 20th century influenced their life patterns. Rather than having to make a choice between full-time work and full-time homemaking, women increasingly engaged in multiple roles simultaneously: work, post-college education, marriage, and child-rearing.

This survey includes a coed college in the Midwest (n=941), a Seven Sisters college in the Northeast (n=1,223), and an African American women's college in the South (n=633) allowing for comparisons to be made by race (2131 white, 663 black, and 108 others) and by college. Responses from ten classes (1934, 1939, 1944, 1949, 1954, 1959, 1964, 1969, 1974, and 1979) also provide comparisons by age cohort. The study consisted of a fifteen-page questionnaire composed of both open- and closed-ended questions.