Television addiction: a survey. PDF
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UUnniivveerrssiittyy ooff MMaassssaacchhuusseettttss AAmmhheerrsstt SScchhoollaarrWWoorrkkss@@UUMMaassss AAmmhheerrsstt Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 1-1-1983 TTeelleevviissiioonn aaddddiiccttiioonn:: aa ssuurrvveeyy.. Robin Nell Smith University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1 RReeccoommmmeennddeedd CCiittaattiioonn Smith, Robin Nell, "Television addiction: a survey." (1983). Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014. 1725. https://doi.org/10.7275/1q4n-1x07 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1/1725 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. TELEVISION ADDICTION: A SURVEY A Dissertation Presented By ROBIN NELL SMITH Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY February 1983 Psychology Robin Nell Smith 1982 All Rights Reserved This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. BNS-8116876. i i TELEVISION ADDICTION: A SURVEY A Dissertation Presented By ROBIN NELL SMITH Approved as to style and content by: teeter Rossi Member , Bonnie Strickland, Department Head Psychology iii Dedicated to my parents, Jack Edward Smith, Jr. and Patricia Ann Smith iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would first like to express my gratitude to my advisor, Dan Anderson. In all aspects of this endeavor, from the earliest ideas to the final revisions, he was consistently helpful and supportive. I have learned a great deal from Dan, and I expect that his example of personal and intellectual integrity will continue to inspire me for years to come. I also want to thank my other committee members for their generosity in sharing time and help toward this project. Peter Rossi and several colleagues, especially Eleanor Weber, shared their exper- tise in conducting survey research. Their careful and extensive review of the questionnaire was especially appreciated. Arnie Well provided guidance in reporting the factor analyses and the binomial analysis. His willingness to provide this guidance when time pressures were great is especially appreciated. Ed Tronick also was cooperative in provid- ing important comments and advice on the paper when time was pressing. Early conversations with Jennings Bryant, who was a committee member before his move to the University of Evansville, were valuable in clarifying my thinking about this phenomenon. Jay Demerath en- couraged me to apply for a dissertation grant even though the funding possibilities looked uncertain. appreciate the generosity of the following people in sharing I their thoughts with me about this project at various phases in its com- v pletion: Alison Alexander, Peter Crown, Seymour Epstein, Howard Gadlin, Marion MacDonald, and Bonnie Strickland. I am very grateful to the National Science Foundation for the dissertation grant which enabled me to carry out this project. A small grant from Sigma Xi, the scientific research honor society, was also very helpful and is appreciated. These funds enabled me to hire Patricia Collins as my research assistant. Her work was excellent and she made contributions to many phases of the project. In addition, Eric Pierce provided creative solutions to the problems posed by having large data sets in small com- puter accounts. His programming and documentation procedures made the mailing process go smoothly. Mike Sutherland and Jim Weigang provided the custom-made confirmatory factor analysis program which was so es- sential to the testing of the hypothesis. Gary Dibble did a very pro- fessional translation of the questionnaire into Spanish. There were several people who, in the course of their work, went "beyond the call of duty" to ensure that this project was properly completed. They include Betsy Adams, Cindy Burger, Richard Clarity, Ron Halko, and Rob Hazen. Susan Reed provided good humor and excellent skill in typing during the last phase of the project. Finally, I want to thank my friends in Dan Anderson's lab for their consistent help and good company through the two years that this project was my major concern. vi ABSTRACT Television Addiction: A Survey February, 1983 Robin Nell Smith, B. A. , Lake Erie College M.A., New York University, Ph.D., University of Massachusetts Directed by: Professor Daniel R. Anderson Despite assumptions about television addiction in the litera- ture on television viewing, there have been no systematic attempts to document it. The present study was the first. A review of theories on addiction processes concluded that the theoretical consensus on addiction permits the possibility of the exis- tence of this phenomenon in TV viewing. Also, the theories point to the affective domain as an area in which to expect differences between TV addicts and normal viewers. Both the scientific and popular conceptions of TV addiction were also reviewed. A content analysis of the popular literature pro- vided specific guidelines for the operational definition of TV addic- tion used in this study. A television viewing questionnaire which included a self- rating scale of items derived from descriptions of addicts in the popu- lar literature, as well as many other measures, was administered by mail to a random sample of residents of Springfield, Massachusetts in the spring of 1982. The response rate was 65%. vii The results of confirmatory factor analyses failed to support the hypothesis that TV addiction exists as it is described in the popu- lar literature. None of the respondents scored at or above the cri- terion for the existence of the addiction factor in their responses. An alternative two-factor model was better able to account for the item covariances. Descriptive statistics on the addiction scale items indicate that most respondents feel that TV-addictive behavior is com- pletely uncharacteristic of them. Yet, 65% agreed that "Television is addictive" and eleven respondents called themselves addicts. It was observed that the average number of hours reported in viewing time for this group was over double that of the entire sample. Future analyses of these data will test alternative conceptions of television addic- tion. An attempt was made to account for the popularity of the notion of television as a "plug-in drug" in terms of (1) our sparse scientific knowledge about the nature of the viewing experience, and (2) an abid- ing fear or ambivalence in American culture about technology and its effects. VI 1 1
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