Showing papers by "Patti M. Valkenburg published in 1999"

Developing a scale to assess three styles of television mediation: “Instructive mediation,” “restrictive mediation,” and “social coviewing”

Abstract: Telephone interviews from a random sample of Dutch parents (N = 123 for the pilot study, N = 519 for the main study), provided an opportunity to explore television mediation activities in which parents could engage. From principal components analysis, three reliable styles of television mediation emerged: restrictive mediation, instructive mediation, and social coviewing. In addition to a number of demographic variables, parental concerns about the negative effects of television were significant predictors of style of television mediation.

The Effects of News Frames on Readers' Thoughts and Recall

Abstract: This study investigated whether and how journalistic news frames affect readers' thoughts about and recall of two issues. A sample of 187 participants was randomly assigned to one of four experimental framing conditions, which included (a) conflict, (b) human interest, (c) attribution of responsibility, and (d) economic consequences, as well as a control condition. Each participant was presented with two newspaper stories that dealt with two socially and politically pertinent issues in Europe: crime and the introduction of the euro, the common European currency. Each story had an identical core component, whereas the title, opening paragraph, and closing paragraph were varied to reflect the frame. The study found that frames played a significant role in the readers' thought-listing responses, and they defined the ways that readers presented information about both issues. The results showed that the human interest news frame can have negative consequences for recall.

What do children value in entertainment programs? A cross‐cultural investigation

Abstract: We investigated which program characteristics in children's entertainment television programs children between 6 and 11 years of age value. We collected data by means of questionnaires among 100 Dutch and 100 U.S. first through fourth graders. The most important characteristics for both Dutch and U.S. children were comprehensibility and action, closely followed by humor, interestingness, innocuousness, realism, violence, and romance, respectively. Compared to Dutch children, U.S. children attached more value to realism, innocuousness, and interestingness. Boys in both samples attached more value to action and violence in a children's program, whereas girls in both samples attached more value to innocuousness and comprehensibility.

A Scale to Assess Children's Moral Interpretations of Justified and Unjustified Violence and Its Relationship to Television Viewing

Abstract: This study develops and validates the Moral Interpretation of Interpersonal Violence (MIIV) Scale. One hundred fifty-eight children responded to 12 stories in which a perpetrator performed either justified or unjustified violence. Children were asked to report how right or wrong they perceived the violence to be and to provide reasons for their responses. Principal components analysis was used to reduce the 12 stories to a smaller set that had higher internal consistency and that correlated with the Sociomoral Reflection Measure—Short Form (SRM-SF). The study also investigated how viewing television violence was related to the MIIV. Children who watched a lot of fantasy violence judged justified violence as less wrong, whereas children who watched a lot of realistic violence judged justified violence as more wrong. In addition, children who watched more fantasy violence and those who watched more realistic violence used less advanced moral reasoning strategies in explaining their judgments.