Publication Date

1975

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

First Advisor

Breen, Myles, 1939-

Degree Name

M.A. (Master of Arts)

Legacy Department

Department of Speech Communication

LCSH

Television broadcasting--Social aspects

Abstract

This Master's Thesis is a study into the relationship between the TV viewing habits of high school male freshmen and their behavior as determined by three types of activities: Psychological Behavior, which is determined by the California Psychological Inventory; Intellectual Behavior, which is determined by IQ, Grade Point Average, and Class Rank; and Physical Behavior, which is determined by the number of hours they watch TV, the number of hours they do homework, and such things as the activities they engage in, the channel they watch, and the number of TV sets they have in their homes. This study is divided into five chapters: Chapter I is the Introduction which outlines the problem and indicates that this study is unlike previous studies in that it does not attempt to draw a cause and effect relationship between TV viewing and behavior, but rather attempts to describe what that relationship is; Chapter II entitled Review of the Literature presents five major studies previously undertaken. Those studies included are: Himmelweit (1958), Schramm (1961), Halloran (1970), The Surgeon General's Report (1972), and Smith (1972); Chapter III is the Procedures of this study and describes the California Psychological Inventory, the survey questionnaire, the subjects of the study and states three areas of hypothesis; Chapter IV presents the Results of this study regarding the three areas of concern; Chapter V is the Summary and Conclusions of this study and presents a general summary of its findings with indications for future research. A bibliography of 24 references is presented. Also included are three Appendixes which indicate all of the findings for the Spearman Rank Order Correlations and their level of significance, and the Frequency Distributions of the Survey questions. The major conclusion of the work indicates: that while there may be some relationship between the viewing habits and Psychological Behavior, most of this relationship is not significant statistically; there seems to be some correlation between the viewing habits of the subjects and their class ranks; and, there is a correlation between the program preferences and the amount of time spent watching television, the channels watched, and the number of TV sets in the homes of the subjects. Therefore, the general hypothesis of this study, that there is a relationship between TV viewing habits and personal behavior, is yet to be proved.

Comments

Includes bibliographical references.

Extent

87 pages

Language

eng

Publisher

Northern Illinois University

Rights Statement

In Copyright

Rights Statement 2

NIU theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from Huskie Commons for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without the written permission of the authors.

Media Type

Text

Download

Share

COinS