Experience, this report identifies three major life-career patterns for mature American women: home, labor force, and mixed careers. The research then explores seven hypotheses which pertain to the influence of women's familial investments, familial resources, and human capital investments on their career patterns. The findings provide general support for the hypotheses. High commitment to traditional familial roles and values, high familial resources, and low human capital tend to be reflected in the disproportionate representation of women with home careers. Alternatively, low commitment to traditional familial roles and values, low familial resources, and high human capital investments are associated with careers in the labor force. However, the findings indicate that husbands' attitudes toward wives working outside the home, previous earning levels, and number of children are more strongly related to the observed career patterns of mature women than marital status, respondents' attitudes about women working, husbands' income, or respondents' education. The findings also suggest that mature American women are likely to have experienced substantial involvement in the labor force, i.e., mixed careers, regardless of their familial investments, familial resources, or human capital investments.

Projections for the global economy frequently center on the BRIC countries: Brazil, Russia, India, and China. As futurists and economists alike define and re-define both formal and informal coalitions (for example, by broadening the R in BRIC to include all Eastern European economies or instead re-directing the discussion to G-8 countries or to World Trade Organization members), the education profiles of the individual nations sometimes resemble economic indicators: what is imported, what is exported, and what is the potential for expansion. Higher education, and specifically distance learning (the Clicks element of this paper), can already be charted in these terms for some nations. This paper describes the current role of distance learning in countries described as growing economies and proposes a typology for describing change as additional data become available. The paper informs readers of global developments in distance education, using the BRIC nations as examples.

Customer interviews and evaluation observations of in‐store supermarket food product demonstrations produced data to test hypotheses about the relationship between aspects of the demonstration, the demonstrator, buyers and non‐buying observers, and increased net sales of the demonstrated product. Findings showed that certain demonstration personal characteristics, professional qualifications, source of employment and demonstrator techniques were significantly related to sales increases. Certain aspects of consumer responses were also significant. Results indicate a need for educators to emphasize the sampling and interaction aspects of demonstrations and for marketers to pay more attention to training demonstrators.