Adolescents, Television, and Support for Government

This research finds that support for government as measured by a feeling thermometer scale is negatively correlated with increased amounts of television viewing by adolescents and varies in affective directions with the types of programs young adults watch. Professors David R. Berman and John A. Stookey are in the Political Science Department, Arizona State University. Data collection and analysis for this article were financed by Grant#77-656-1-IIIF-j (A) ("Youth Needs in Maricopa County, Arizona") awarded to Arizona State University (Professor John A. Stookey, principal investigator)' by the Arizona State Justice Planning Agency. Work on this article was shared equally by the authors. Public Opinion Quarterly ? 1980 by The Trustees of Columbia University Published by Elsevier North-Holland, Inc. 0033-362X/80/0044-330/$1.75 This content downloaded from 207.46.13.183 on Thu, 21 Apr 2016 06:58:31 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms ADOLESCENTS, TV, AND SUPPORT FOR GOVERNMENT 331 may place government institutions in a more positive context than does television programing as a whole, there is also reason to believe that the net impact of news and public affairs programs on viewers is essentially negative. Previous research suggests that network news and public affairs programs have a heavy emphasis on negative information and anti-institutional themes (Robinson, 1976). For this reason and because of television's high credibility, viewers may respond to such broadcasts by "growing more cynical, more frustrated, more despairing" and "increasingly less enamored of their social and political institutions" (Robinson, 1976: 426). Studies also suggest that certain types of entertainment programs, particularly those containing violence, may influence the political attitudes and behavior of young viewers (Comstock, 1975). The scope of the relationship between the political orientations of adolescents and the wide range of entertainment programs they view, however, has not been explored. This neglect apparently reflects the view that news programs contain more politically relevant stimuli than do entertainment programs, and thus are more likely to influence political orientations (Atkin and Gantz, 1978). This study expands upon previous research by exploring how the amount of television viewing and the types of programs viewed by adolescents are related to their supportive attitudes toward government. Attention is given to several categories of entertainment programs as well as to news and public affairs programs. Because of the scarcity of previous studies on the relationships of concern in this article the authors have not formulated research hypotheses. Rather, our focus is on the following questions: Is the extent of TV viewing by adolescents correlated positively or negatively with their feelings toward various levels of government? Are different types of programs that young adults view correlated positively or negatively with these feelings? Research Methods and Measures Data for this study were gathered in the summer of 1978 in the Phoenix, Arizona, metropolitan area as part of a larger project funded by the Federal Law Enforcement Assistance Administration to determine the needs and problems of the area's youth. Interviewers were hired with funds from this project. Most of those hired had previous interviewing experience, and all were given extensive training including supervised practice interviews. Interviews were conducted with a random sample of 600 adolescents aged 13 through 17. A multistage sampling design involving the This content downloaded from 207.46.13.183 on Thu, 21 Apr 2016 06:58:31 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 332 BERMAN AND STOOKEY random selection of census tracts, blocks, and dwelling units was used. Selected dwelling units were screened for teenagers. If a teenager lived in a selected home, he or she was interviewed. If more than one youth live in the selected dwelling, a random procedure based on age and sex was used to choose the respondent. If the initial unit was not the home of a 13to 17-year-old, interviewers used a preestablished decision rule to select another unit on the block. The second unit was then screened for teenagers. This procedure was continued until a respondent was located. The interviewers were instructed to make at least three callbacks to attempt to complete the interview with the selected youth. If an interview was still not possible, a random replacement method was used. The response rate for originally selected youth was 81 percent. Level of TV watching was operationalized as the adolescent's response to the question of how many hours per day on the average he or she watched television. Support for government was defined in three separate ways: support for the federal government, support for the state government, and support for the city government. Measures for the level of support were obtained by asking respondents to rate the levels of government on a "feeling" thermometer.' Those surveyed were told that ratings between 1 degree and 49 degrees indicated a cool feeling, a 50-degree rating indicated a neutral (neither cool nor warm) feeling, and that ratings beyond 51 degrees indicated a favorable or warm feeling with 99 degrees being the most favorable. In order to explore the impact of certain program types on support for government, each respondent was given a checklist of 160 regularly scheduled programs currently being aired in the Phoenix metropolitan area and was asked to mark which of these he/she regularly watched. The list included all the network programs (including network reruns on an independent channel) and locally produced news and public affairs programs which were listed in the TV Guide for the week of August 1, 1978. Program types were then isolated by factor analysis. Programs which loaded strongly on a factor (a loading of greater than .35) were used to create an index of the degree to which each type of program was watched. Indexes were based on the number of programs within each type watched by the teenager, divided by the number of programs of that type. Thus, each teenager was given an index score for each program type that varied between 0 (never watched any of the programs) to 1 (watched all the programs). These indexes served as 1 The "feeling" thermometer device was modeled after the one found in Miller and Miller (1977: 916). This content downloaded from 207.46.13.183 on Thu, 21 Apr 2016 06:58:31 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms ADOLESCENTS, TV, AND SUPPORT FOR GOVERNMENT 333 independent variables to specify the relationship between type of TV viewing and support for government. The sample had an average of four hours of television viewing per day, with a standard deviation of 2.08. Factor analysis of the program-watching behavior revealed six identifiable program types. These factors, and the programs which loaded most strongly on them, are summarized in Table 1. The indexes for each factor were then calculated. The mean and standard deviation of these are shown in Table 2. The responses given by the adolescents on the governmental feeling thermometers are summarized in Table 3. As the table demonstrates, the mean is slightly higher for state government than for city government and higher for city than for federal government. Table 4 shows a substantial correlation between support for the various levels of government. There is, however, enough variation to warrant maintaining the distinction between them, rather than combining them into a single "support for government" scale. The validity of this approach Table 1. Program Types as Determined by Factor Analysis Examples of Programs Which Factor Load Strongly on the Factor Adult M.A.S.H., Alice, Love Boat, One Day at a Time, Fantasy Island entertainment Juvenile Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, Wonder Woman, The Wonderful entertainment World of Disney Cartoons Dynomutt, Jabberjaw, Fat Albert, etc. News Local and National News Public affairs Meet the Press, Face the Nation, several Public Broadcasting shows Police shows Baretta, Police Story, Police Woman, Kojak, Adam 12, Starsky and Hutch Table 2. Summary Statistics of TV Viewing Indexes Program Type Mean Standard Deviation Adult entertainment .363 .217 Juvenile entertainment .403 .243 Cartoons .123 .209 News .257 .319 Public affairs .037 .140 Police shows .338 .244 Table 3. Summary Statistics of Government Feeling Thermometers Level of Government Mean Standard Deviation Federal 54.372 24.547 State 56.978 23.886 City 55.496 24.516 This content downloaded from 207.46.13.183 on Thu, 21 Apr 2016 06:58:31 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 334 BERMAN AND STOOKEY Table 4. Correlations Between the Support for the Three Levels of Government