Effects of television content on physical risk-taking in children.
This study is an investigation of effects of risk-taking by characters in television programs on children's self-reported willingness to take physical risks. Twenty-four boys and 26 girls, ages 6 to 9 years, were assigned to view TV stimulus programs with infrequent physical risk-taking. TV stimulus programs with frequent risk-taking, or no TV stimuli. A self-report measure was used to assess children's willingness to take physical risks in several common injury-relevant situations. Five of the items were administered as a pretest before children watched the stimulus programs and five items were used as a post-test after they viewed the programs. A validation assessment on an independent sample of children indicated that the risk-taking measure was positively correlated with other measures of risk-taking as well as physical injuries. Results indicated that children who viewed the high-risk TV programs increased their self-reported risk-taking significantly more than children in the low-risk TV and no-TV control conditions. Findings are discussed within a theoretical context of observational learning processes, with implications for childhood injury.
Department of Psychology, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater 74078.
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R
Potts
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Doppler
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M
Hernandez
D000704:Analysis of Variance; D002648:Child; D002652:Child Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012309:Risk-Taking; D012919:Social Behavior; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013690:Television