Children's Viewing of Crime Shows and Attitudes on Law Enforcement

Abstract

VioLit summary: OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study by Dominick was to examine relationships between media exposure to and law enforcement and attitudes about police and among elementary school children. It also attempted to bridge the gap between research that has focused solely on mass media socialization and research that has focused only on young people's attitudes about police and crime. METHODOLOGY: During May of 1972, questionnaires were completed by 371 fifth graders in New York City schools. Two schools were in blue collar communities and two were in white collar communities. A content analysis was done to pick crime aired in the 1970-1971 television season. Nothing was mentioned about how the schools, children, or TV sample episodes were chosen. Crime shows were defined as shows that had at least two crimes in the sample episode. Respondents were asked about how often they watched these shows. Scaling went from 1 (never) to 4 (almost always watch). The Crime Show Viewing Index was used as an independent variable, and is calculated by simply summing these weights for the 21 shows. The TV Importance Index was also used as an independent variable. In a pretest, respondents were asked about their most important source of information about police, crime,and law enforcement. Four sources of information (TV, parents, friends, and personal contact with police) were used in a pair comparison technique adapted from White. The number of times TV was chosen as the most important source was then tabulated, with scores ranging from 3 (high importance) to 0 (low importance). Perceived attitudes of friends toward police was also used as an independent variable. This was indexed by three inter-correlated items. Weights were assigned to each option and summed. Parents' attitudes towards police was also used as an independent variable. This measure used two items with revised wording from the Friend's Index. Personal contact with police was used as an independent variable and an index was created from three yes-no questions concerning the respondent's experience with police. The Occupational Prestige scale was also used. This is a 13 step index described by Troldahl. Eight questions were then asked designed to measure attitudes and knowledge about police. These were the dependent variables: identification with TV characters, occupational prestige ranking, evaluation of police, efficacy of police, reality of TV police, perceptions of and police violence, reporting of witnessed crimes, and knowledge of the legal system. For criterion variables measured by nominal methods, independent variables were dichotomized by means of a median split and chi square tests were performed. For ordinal techniques, variables were transformed into ordinal scales and Spearman rhos were calculated. Product moment correlations were used where interval scales were the criterion variables. FINDINGS/DISCUSSION: The inter-correlation among the six dependent variables was generally low. Contact with police was significantly correlated with show viewing (CSV) (p AUTHOR'S RECOMMENDATIONS: The author implied that more research is needed in TV as an information source and other non-TV influences on childrens' attitudes toward law enforcement. EVALUATION: This study begins an interesting exploratory look at the relationship between children's viewing of shows and their knowledge/beliefs about law enforcement. The sample size, 371, provides a large number of respondents, but there was no mention of how the sample was selected. The use of questionnaires by fifth grade school children raises questions of how these were administered. This is not given in the article. Other definitions and selection procedures such as crime and white/blue collar communities raise more methodological questions. The analysis, relying totally on correlation matrices, is associative only and cannot help to establish causal links or sort out inter-item influences. This study was published in the spring of 1974 which makes the findings quite dated. The issues raised are interesting ones which need more sophisticated analysis, a broader respondent base, and more recent replication. (CSPV Abstract - Copyright © 1992-2007 by the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, Institute of Behavioral Science, Regents of the University of Colorado) KW - 1970s KW - New York KW - Grade 5 KW - Elementary School Student KW - Late Childhood KW - Exposure to Violence KW - Media Violence Effects KW - Television Viewing KW - Television Violence KW - Child Attitudes KW - Child Perceptions KW - Child Ideology KW - Attitudes Toward Police KW - Law Enforcement