topic 6 - Charlton et al (2000) : children's playground behaviour across five years of broadcast television

Question 1

what was the background of the study?

Answer 1

Research was conducted on the island of St Helena which is a small British Colony in the South Atlantic Ocean. Island had no access to mainstream television channels but there were plans for this. Charlton et al were interested on how this would influence children on the island.

Question 2

what was the aim of the study?

Answer 2

to investigate the effects of television on children’s behaviour, their aggression.

Question 3

what was the procedure of the study?

Answer 3

1. children from 2 schools in 1994 were filmed on the school playground (approx. 256 minutes of video footage was taken)
2. Then, television was introduced in the 2000’s
3. 5 years later, the 2 schools were again filmed (approx. 344 minutes of video footage) and the children’s viewing diaries (what shows they watched) were analysed
4. 26 playground behaviours were observed (ex. hitting and kicking , and pro-social behaviours such as turn-taking )

Question 4

what were the results of the study?

Answer 4

1. the researchers found five declines in prosocial behaviour of both boys and girls in single gender pairs/ groups and mixed group/ pairs.
2. they found two increases in prosocial behaviour of boys playing alone and two decreases in anti social behaviour of boys and girls
3. no change in antisocial behaviour in children’s playground such as fighting, hitting or physical violence.
4. girls were more likely to show prosocial behaviour than boys and boys were more likely to display anti social acts.

Question 5

what was the conclusion of the study?

Answer 5

• Television had little influence on the children
• Researchers noticed that the environment might have had an impact
• The environment the children lived in may have had an effect because it was a close-knit nature of community with high adult surveillance over the children and this could explain why the aggression displayed on television didn’t impact the children

Question 6

what were the strengths of the study?

Answer 6

1. The same primary school was used in both the before and after television observations. Even though different children were observed, the same environments were studied to minimise differences that could have occurred if different schools had been used.
2. High ecological validity, the experiment was a natural experiment, therefore, conducted in a natural environment. It was conducted in real school playgrounds and the children were unaware that they were being studied, this means that the behaviour of the children was natural and unaffected by the presence of strange observers.

Question 7

what were the weaknesses of the study?

Answer 7

1. findings of the study may be limited to a particular community. Research carried out in different locations ie Canada by Tannis Williams (1981) suggested that television did increase aggression in children.
2. Researchers also pointed out that the television programmes watched on the island may differ to mainland television and may contain less violence. An example is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles which has a high level of violence was not broadcasted on the island.