Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

This data collection comprises the interview material for the study 'Consumption, lifestyle and identity: reading the new men's lifestyle magazines', and includes focus group and individual interview transcripts. The study aimed to explore the new generation of men's lifestyle magazines, which emerged since the mid-1980s (including titles such as Loaded, FHM, GQ, Arena). The researchers sought to examine specific forms of masculinity as they varied by place, class, ethnicity and generation, and also to assess the extent to which variations in the magazines' content and the way they are read by different groups of men can be explained according to competing sociological theories of masculinity and the media. In addition to 20 focus group interviews with various groups of men and some women, five individual interviews with editors of representative magazines were also conducted.

Main Topics:

Topics covered include: readership of men's lifestyle magazines, gender, generations, age, identity, lifestyles, mass media, men, social class, consumption and identity within the focus group interviews, and career development and editorial policy in the editor interviews.

Purposive selection/case studies

Face-to-face interview

focus group and individual interviews