Exploratory study of children's perceptions of television violence and it's influence on their aggressive behaviors, 1999

This study examined the effect television violence has on a childs aggressive behaviors. More specifically, this research examined childrens perceptions of television violence and its influence on their behavior. The study used a forty-item television survey called a Television Assessment Survey. The questions in the survey attempted to describe the amount and type of programs children watch, assess how children feel about violence on television and determine if and how television influenced their behavior. The sample population drawn for this study included teenagers from a residential treatment facility and teenagers from a local junior high school who were invited to attend a teenage social, resulting in a sample size of thirty-one participants. Each participant was chosen purposively, the researcher was given the opportunity to select the most representative participants for the study who were all the children who met the criteria. On November 16, 1998 and November 27, 1998, all of the data were collected between the hours 3:40 pm to 4:40 pm at the treatment facility and 7:00 pm to 11:00 pm at the teenage social. However, findings indicate that childrens perceptions of television violence had no effect on the aggressive behaviors they exhibited. These results did not support the hypothesis. There were no correlations between their perception of television violence and their behavior. The most likely explanation is that a television survey alone cannot measure perceptions and the sample size was not large enough to detect a relationshi