THE NEW ZEALAND LIBRARY & INFORMATION MANAGEMENT JOURNAL NGĀ PŪRONGO

NEW ZEALAND LIBRARY & INFORMATION MANAGEMENT JOURNAL • NGĀ PŪRONGO VOL 55, ISSUE NO. 3 • OCTOBER 2015
on answers to the following three questions: ‘Have you ever
needed information and support to help you deal with a difficult
time in your life?’, ‘How old are you?’ and ‘What is your ethnic
background’. It includes a sample size for each category of
age and ethnicity variables, proportions of participants which
belong to each category and the 95% approximate confidence
interval for the proportions.
spouse or partner (59%). The last column in Table 2 suggests
that Professionals (doctors, counselors and pastors) were
the first people New Zealand men approached asking for
information and help when they needed it. Professionals were
followed by Spouses/Partners, Male and Female friends in this
particular order. The top five list completes Mother who ended
on the fifth position.
Table 2 could be used to answer the first part of the first
question ‘Who were the most common kind of people New
Zealand men went to for information?’ raised in the introduction
section.
Table 1: The socio-demographic distribution of those who
seek and those who didn’t seek help
There are no significant differences between two distributions
by age in Table 1, x 2 (5, n = 1528) = 5.23, p = .39. The age
structures of those who seek help and information and those
who didn’t were quite similar in these two groups of participants.
There are also no significant differences between two
distributions by ethnicity in Table 1, x 2 (2, n = 1528) = .94, p
= .62. The ethnic structures of those who seek help and
information and those who didn’t were quite similar in these
two groups of participants.
4.1 Seeking information, support and help
Based on answers to question ‘Who were the people you
went to for information, help and support when you were feeling
stressed or out-of-sorts?’ proportions of people to whom
participants went for information and help were calculated and
presented in Figure 1. Similar proportions were calculated for
the age group and ethnicity variable. These proportions were
then used to rank people by each category in both age and
ethnicity variables.
Table 2: Rank list of the people to whom men went for
information by age group
When an Age variable is included in analysis there are some
changes in the ranks, but the Professionals are clearly the first
source of information for all age groups with exception of age
group 35-44 who would talk first to their spouse or partner.
For all the other age groups Spouse/Partner is the second
source of information or person New Zealand men would seek
information and help to overcome stressful situation in their life.
The youngest age group (15-24 years) is also an exception
because they would approach their mother after professionals
if they would feel stressed.
The type of the people New Zealand men contacted for
information and help when they were feeling stressed are quite
stable at the top. However from Table 2 we can see some
variations in ranks between age groups. Are these differences
in rank lists between age groups statistically significant? To
answer this question a Spearman’s rank-order correlation was
run to determine the relationship between ranks of 11 people
from whom New Zealand men seek information and help.
Results of calculation are given in the lower triangle of Table
3 (below the main diagonal). The upper part of Table 3 will
be used later to address the second question raised in the
introduction section.
Figure 1: Who were the people you went to for information,
help and support?
When asked who they approached for help and support
the main source was from professionals (66%) and then from
Table 3: Correlation matrix (age)
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