Resource Management and Consumer Issues Questions and Answers

Answer: C

Human resources are those inherent in a person.

Home management divides resources into human and non-human. Human resources are the abilities, skills, knowledge, attitudes, energy and time that belong to people themselves.

Non-human resources lie outside the individual: money, material goods and possessions, and community facilities such as parks, schools and libraries. So 'external to an individual', 'material possessions' and 'provided by the community' all describe non-human resources.

Answer: D

The keyed answer is long-term goals (option D).

The foundation (beginning) stage is the start of family life, when the couple sets up a home, adjusts to each other and plans for children, savings and housing. Use of resources at this stage is directed mainly by what the family hopes to achieve over the years ahead, which is why long-term goals are named.

Values and standards guide resource use throughout the life cycle and are not tied to this stage in particular. Short-term goals matter day to day but do not set the direction of a young family's resource use. I could not find a home management text that states the link to long-term goals in these words, so this follows the key and the usual description of the stage.

Answer: B

Using vegetables from the kitchen garden is an example of direct real income.

Family income is classed as money income, real income and psychic income. Real income is the flow of goods and services available to the family. It is direct when the goods and services are obtained without spending money, such as home-grown vegetables, a family member's services or the use of an owned house, and indirect when they are obtained by exchanging money income.

Psychic income is the satisfaction derived from using goods and services, and total income is the sum of all forms, so neither names this particular case.

Answer: A

Values desirable simply for their own sake are intrinsic values.

An intrinsic value is an end in itself: health, love, beauty or knowledge may be valued for what they are, without reference to anything they lead to. ('Sale' in the stem stands for sake.)

Extrinsic or instrumental values are valued as means to something else, as money is valued for what it buys. 'Factual value' is not a recognised class of value in home management.

Answer: D

Boredom and frustration fatigue are examples of psychological fatigue.

Psychological fatigue arises from the mind and emotions rather than from physical work: monotony, lack of interest, worry, frustration and conflict produce a feeling of tiredness even when little energy has been spent. It is relieved by changing the task or attitude, not by rest alone.

Physiological, muscular and visual fatigue are physical: they result from the actual use of the body, its muscles or the eyes, and are measured by changes in the body after exertion.

Answer: A

The method using a floor plan with pins and thread is the pathway chart.

A pathway (or string) chart is a work simplification technique. The floor plan of the kitchen or work area is drawn to scale and fixed on a board, pins are placed at the work centres, and a thread is wound from pin to pin in the order the worker moves. Measuring the thread gives the distance walked, and rearranging the centres shows how to shorten it. ('Tread' in the stem stands for thread.)

Process and operation charts record steps with symbols, not a thread on a plan, and graph charts plot data.

Answer: C

The method of resolving conflict showing the highest level of adjustment is integration.

In integration, the parties work out a new solution that satisfies the essential wishes of both, so no one has to give up what matters to them. It needs mutual understanding and cooperation, which is why it is the most mature level of adjustment.

Voluntary submission and dominance both leave one party yielding to the other, and compromise leaves each side giving up part of what it wanted, so the conflict is settled with only partial satisfaction.

Answer: A

The advantage of planning is that it is carried out for future action.

Planning is thinking ahead: a plan is a mental picture of what is to be done, how and when, made before the activity starts. Its value lies in letting the family foresee needs, compare alternatives and use resources well before committing them.

Past jobs belong to evaluation, which looks back on what has been done. Present or ongoing action belongs to the controlling step, in which the plan is carried out and checked.

Answer: B

A family budget is a plan for future expenditure.

A budget is an estimate, made in advance, of the expected income of the family for a period and of how it will be spent among food, housing, clothing, education, savings and so on. It is therefore a spending plan for the coming period.

Recording and reviewing past or present expenditure is the job of household accounts, which are kept to check the budget afterwards. Estimating total income is only one input to the budget, not the budget itself.

Answer: D

Decisions related to routine, repetitive actions are habitual decisions.

Once a decision has been made many times, it is taken almost without conscious thought: the time of rising, the way the table is laid, the route to work. Such habitual decisions save time and energy for decisions that need deliberation.

Technical decisions concern the means of doing a job, intellectual (or rational) decisions are reached by deliberate reasoning, and a routine decision is not called 'unimportant' merely because it is repeated.