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( ...,*.'."i-.2:.‘:; .. ., u 5 ‘ . .’ ‘ « U r g-rucf i; w. MM...“ 9 r ' -..-::1.u~. air” Illa/Illlllflfiflglllyfilll 11111)” My Milly/Mil _,'r'}'w-“{3n C: £3315“ m7 £92317“qu “5332928”; Accepted by the faculty of the Department of Communication, College of Communication Arts, Michigan State University, in partial fulfillment of the require- ments for the Doctor of Philosophy degree. Director of Thesis Guidance Committee: Chairman ABSTRACT TELEVISION VIEWING AND OCCUPATIONAL KNOWLEDGE AMONG JAPANESE CHILDREN By Junichi Kawashima This study explores the potential of television as an incidental learning source for children's knowledge of the world of work. Young children gradually acquire information con- cerning various occupational roles and their statuses. This ostensibly helps them to choose occupations in the future as well as to help in interaction with adults hold— ing various positions. This part of the child's socializa- tion is assumed to take place informally through direct contact with people at work, through conversation with parents and neighbors, or through exposure to mass media such as television, movies, comic books, etc. Of these, television appears to constitute an importance source of occupational information, because it provides a great deal of indirect information about various jobs, and because children spend a great deal of time watching it. Junichi Kawashima Following the pattern of the DeFleur study,* this research focuses upon: (1) the relative effectiveness of television as a learning source for children's occupational knowledge; (2) the relationships between the child's knowl- edge of TV portrayals of occupations and amount of viewing; and (3) the homogenization effect of television regarding children's knowledge of the world of work. Two dependent variables used in the present study are; (l) role knowledge; and (2) status knowledge. Meas- ures of the two dependent variables were obtained from the Occupations Test, which consists of three sets of six cartoon-like representations of various occupations drawn from six levels of occupational prestige. The three sets of occupations represent the three distinct types of con- tact through which children may acquire information about occupational roles and their status rankings. Type of con- tact with roles constitutes the independent variable. The three types of contact with roles are: (1) personal con- tact; (2) television; and (3) general culture. Data were collected from 170 fourth and sixth grade children in a typical medium-sized city near Tokyo. The selected children were administered the Occupations Test in a personal interview situation. In addition, they were *DeFleur, M. L., and L. B. DeFleur, "The Relative Contribution of Television As a Learning Source for Chil— dren's Occupational Knowledge,” American Sociological Review, 32 (1967), pp. 777-789. Junichi Kawashima asked to keep a diary of daily activities, from which the data on media exposure habits were derived for three week- end days. The data on the relationships between occupational knowledge and three types of contact occupations were analyzed first by t-test for the differences between re- lated means and then by mixed design analysis of variance when grade, sex, social class, and intelligence variables were controlled. The relationships between occupational knowledge of televised roles and amount of TV viewing, viewing adult TV fare, and exposure to pictorial media, were tested first by product moment correlations and then by partial correlations controlling each of the four con- trol variables. The homogenization effect of television was examined in terms of coefficients of concordance among status rankings of three types of contact occupations. Personal contact was found to be the most effective learning source for children's occupational role knowledge, followed by television and then by general culture. The findings on status knowledge, however, were opposite to the predicted direction, general culture being the most effective source. Role knowledge of television contact occupations was significantly and negatively related to amount of television viewing and exposure to pictorial media. Junichi Kawashima The remaining hypothesized relationships between occupational knowledge and media exposure habits were not significant. The coefficients of concordance obtained seem to point to a homogenization effect, specifically among chil- dren who are in the sixth grade, from upper—middle class families, and in the medium intelligence level. These groups of children were also found to know more about TV roles than other groups. The present study strongly supports the DeFleur hypothesis on the relative effectiveness of television as a learning source for children's occupatibnal role knowl— edge. Some negative findings seem to have resulted from methodological problems in selecting three types of con- tact occupations, especially TV roles, in assessing status knowledge, or in estimating amount of viewing. The 9223- pations Test needs to be improved or modified in order to become a more valid and reliable test. TELEVISION VIEWING AND OCCUPATIONAL KNOWLEDGE AMONG JAPANESE CHILDREN By Junichi Kawashima A THESIS Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Communication 1971 0706/0 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author wishes to express his sincere apprecia- tion to the Chairman of his Guidance Committee, Dr. Hideya Kumata, for his patience and encouragement throughout the writer's doctoral program. Many thanks are also extended to the other members of the Guidance Committee, Dr. Ervin P. Bettinghaus, Dr. Verling C. Troldahl and Dr. Frederick B. Waisanen. A large number of persons have substantially assisted the author during the course of the dissertation. The writer is particularly indebted to Dr. Melvin C. DeFleur, Washington State University, for his helpful suggestions in the design phase, Dr. Terumi Nakano and Mr. Hisao Sakamoto, International Christian University, Tokyo, for their great assistance in the data collection phase in Japan, and Mrs. Anita Immelé for her considerable help in the data analysis phase. Robert F. Keith and Clyde D. Morris have always provided constructive suggestions during the entire dissertation process. Special gratitude is also extended to many staff members of the Ontario Educational Communications Authority. In particular, the author wishes to express his thanks to ii Mr. T. R. Ide, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. David J. Cook, Executive Director, for their thought- fulness and support. To Michiko, Jun and Ken--thank you for your patience and understanding. CHAPTER I. II. III. IV. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: THE PROBLEM AREA TELEVISION VIEWING AND INCIDENTAL LEARNING Incidental Learning . The Process of Television Viewing Television Viewing and Occupational Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . METHODOLOGY Community and Sample Selection Development of the Measuring Instrument Data Collection . . Operationalization Of Variables Data Analysis FINDINGS Tests of Main Hypotheses Tests of Related Hypotheses SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION . Summary Discussion Implications for Research BIBLIOGRAPHY iv Page APPENDIX A: APPENDIX B: APPENDIX C: APPENDIX D: LIST OF APPENDICES Status Rankings of 98 Occupations Score Sheet for Occupational Role Knowledge and Grading Procedures . Description of Daily Activities and Record Form . . . . . . . . Mean Status-Knowledge Scores On Three Types of Contact Occupations by Grade, Sex, Social Class and Intelligence . . . . . . . . . Page 101 104 110 117 LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES TABLE Page 1. Relative Frequency of Appearance on Television of 24 Professional Categories and Occupational Groupings . . . . . . . . . . 34 2. Classification of Parents' Occupations . . . . 36 3. Ranks Assigned to Selected Occupations . . . . 40 4. Average Numbers of Three Types of Contact Occupations Seen, Seen via Television, and Talked to by Children (N= 17 0) . . . . . . 41 5. Mean Role- Knowledge Scores and Standard Deviations On Three Types of Contact Occupations (N= 170) . . . . . . . . . . . . . S4 6. Mixed Design Analysis of Variance (Treatments x Subjects x Grade: Dependent Variable = Role Knowledge) . . . . . . . . . . 55 7. Mixed Design Analysis of Variance (Treatments x Subjects x Sex: Dependent Variable = Role Knowledge) . . . . . . . . . . 56 8. Mixed Design Analysis of Variance (Treatments x Subjects x Social Class: Dependent Variable = Role Knowledge) . . . . . 56 9. Mixed Design Analysis of Variance (Treatments x Subjects x Intelligence: Dependent Variable = Role Knowledge) . . . . . 57 10. Mean Status- Knowledge Scores and Standard Deviations on Three Types of Contact Occupations (N= 170) . . . . . . . . . . .‘. . 58 11. Mean Role-Knowledge Scores on/and Average Status Ranks Given to Individual Occupations Included in the Occupations Test (N=l70) . . . 59 vi TABLE 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. Page Intercorrelations Among Status- Knowledge Scores on Three Types of Contact Occupations (N= 170) . . . . . . . . 60 Intercorrelations Among Role— Knowledge Scores on Three Types of Contact Occupations (N= 170) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Mixed Design Analysis of Variance (Treatments x Subjects x Grade: Dependent Variable = Status Knowledge) . . . . 61 Mixed Design Analysis of Variance (Treatments x Subjects x Sex: Dependent Variable = Status Knowledge) . . . . 62 Mixed Design Analysis of Variance (Treatments x Subjects x Social Class: Dependent Variable = Status Knowledge) . . . . 63 Mixed Design Analysis of Variance (Treatments x Subjects x Intelligence: Dependent Variable = Status Knowledge) . . . . 63 Correlations Between Media Exposure Variables and Role-Knowledge Score of Television Contact Occupations (N=l70) . . . . 65 Total Amounts of Various Media Exposure for Three Weekend Days . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Correlations Between Media Exposure Variables and Status—Knowledge Score of Television Contact Occupations (N=l70) . . . . 67 Coefficients of Concordance among Status Rankings of Three Types of Contact Occupations for Fourth and Sixth Grade Children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Coefficients of Concordance among Status Rankings of Three Types of Contact Occupations for Male and Female Children . . . 70 Coefficients of Concordance among Status Rankings of Three Types of Contact Occupations for Children of Three Social Class Levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 TABLE 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. FIGURE 1. Coefficients of Concordance among Status Rankings of Three Types of Contact Occupations for Children of Three Intelligence Levels . . . . . . Mean Role- Knowledge Scores on Three Types of Contact Occupations for Fourth and Sixth Grade Children Mean Role—Knowledge Scores on Three Types of Contact Occupations for Male and Female Children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mean Role- Knowledge Scores on Three Types of Contact Occupations for Children of Three Social Class Levels Mean Role-Knowledge Scores on Three Types of Contact Occupations for Children of Three Intelligence Levels Summary of the Findings for Related Hypotheses on Occupational Knowledge Mixed Design Analysis of Variance (Treatments x Subjects x Grade x TV Viewing: Dependent Variable = Role Knowledge) Mixed Design Analysis of Variance (Treatments x Subjects x Grade x TV Viewing: Dependent Variable = Status Knowledge) Coefficients of Concordance Among Status Rankings of Three Types of Contact Occupations for Heavy and Light Viewers by Grade . . . . . . . . . . . Role Representations Used in the Occupations Test . . . . viii Page 71 72 74 75 77 79 81 82 83 43 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: THE PROBLEM AREA With the advent of television, there has been a common assumption among communication researchers that the new medium serves as an important source of information about a wide variety of topics for children. Obviously, the basic aim of television is to entertain rather than to educate. However, TV is seen to have its full potential as a source for ”incidental learning” of various topics for young audiences (Schramm and others, 1961, p. 75). In this regard, Himmelweit and Others (1958, p. 229) present the following observations: Television is one further source of information-- probably an important one, because it fulfills three conditions for effective learning. First, the child enjoys it and so is favourably predisposed to what is put over. Secondly, he spends a lot of time watching and, since the views and values presented are fairly consistent, he receives many cues pointing in the same direction, thus reinforcing one another. Thirdly, television affects two senses at once and so might offer the child more than the same material would offer if it was heard on the radio or read in a book. Over the past two decades, considerable research has been done to determine the influence of television upon children's general knowledge, interests, or school performances.l These investigations seem to indicate that in general, television does not stimulate interests or broaden horizons among children as much as was expected, and that the kinds of knowledge they acquire, if any, may be of little use. Some communication researchers seem to contend, however, that TV serves most effectively as a source for incidental learning of some topics about which children know very little (e.g., Schramm and others, 1961; Maccoby, 1963). One such unfamiliar topic, where television is likely to have its effect, is the world of work. Appar- ently, television content in general, and adult TV shows in particular, provide a great deal of indirect informa- tion about a variety of occupations and the people who work at them. In reality, many of these occupations and workers may be rarely seen by most children and thus they are unfamiliar to them. Since children appear to spend a great deal of time watching television, particularly adult TV fare,2 they may acquire some information about various occupations portrayed on TV and may thereby develop their conceptions of the occupational world through the inciden- tal learning process. With reference to the child's 1For a brief review of research, see a UNESCO report (Schramm ed., 1964, pp. 11-13) 2See the Himmelweit study (1958) and the Schramm study (1961). incidental learning of occupations from television, Schramm and others (1961, p. 155) state: ”He sees surprisingly very little of the actual behavior of making a living information on this little known part of life (little known by the child, that is) is one of the chief topics of incidental learning.” In examining children's use of television, Maccoby (1963, pp. 126-127) speculates: "They also use it to prepare themselves for their future lives as students, as marriage partners, as a member of a pro- fessional or occupational group.” In short, there seems little doubt that the child learns something about the world of work through watching televised portrayals of occupations. In spite of the accumulation of various documents regarding the importance of television as a source of in- formation about occupations, there has been little systematic research to determine the extent to which TV affects the child's conceptual learning of the world of work. Actually, some attempts in this field have been made in the past by several communication researchers, although most attention has been focused on the ”harmful" effects of mass media. In a laboratory experiment, Siegel (1958) found that children's role expectations of a taxi- driver were influenced by the content of a radio drama which depicted the aggressive taxi-driver. In a field experiment of the long-term effects of television, Himmelweit and others (1958) asked children to name the occupations which they believed were either well paid or glamorous. Their findings suggest that both viewers and non-viewers mentioned fashion modeling or work in the world of entertainment as glamorous; however, the viewers mentioned more often white-collar jobs as the better pay— ing jobs than their local factory jobs. These studies indicate that media content may affect the child's knowl— edge about occupations in somewhat stereotyped ways. In addition, several studies suggest that mass media may affect children's occupational interests or occupational choices in the future. In an experimental study of radio space programs, Zajonc (1954) found that children would wish to be like the successful character depicted on the program, regardless of the methods he employed to gain success. The Himmelweit study (1958) suggests that there was a small but consistent influence of television on the way children thought generally about jobs, job values, success, and social surroundings: i.e., (1) in their job aspirations, viewers proved to be more ambitious than non-viewers; (2) in their job values, viewers were more middle-class; (3) in the assessment of the factors making for personal success, they more often stressed the need for self-confidence, even though it had little effect on the jobs they expected to do; and (4) some of their descriptions of the homes of rich people reflected the hallmarks of wealth depicted on television. Bailyn (1959) found that boys who possessed certain psy- chological problems and who were heavy users of pictorial media (i.e., television, movies, and comic books) were no more inclined than other children to give unrealistic answers when they were asked what they would most like to do when they grew up, but when asked what they would like to be changed into, they were more likely to choose media characters such as Superman, FBI agents, or detectives. It is important to note, however, that television is just one of the many sources of information about the world of work. Children can acquire occupational infor’ mation through direct contact with workers on the street, through conversations with parents and neighbors, or through exposure to various other mass media such as movies, magazines, comic books, etc. The pertinent ques— tion then is: to what extent does television affect the child's knowledge of the world of work as compared with other sources of information? Furthermore, since the influence of television upon children's occupational knowledge is ”cummulative” in nature, the question should also be asked as to how can such an effect be measured systematically? An investigation completed by DeFleur and DeFleur (1967) appears to provide a direction to the questions raised above. Briefly, three distinct sources of infor— mation were first selected on the basis of their influence on children's conceptual learning of the world of work. These were: (1) personal contact, (2) television, and (3) general culture. Occupational roles learned through personal contact refer to jobs with which the average child comes into contact during his normal life in the community, whereas those roles learned through the general community culture refer to jobs which are widely under— stood by adults in the community but rarely seen by children either in person or on television. Television contact occupations are roles which are frequently por— trayed in modern settings on the TV screen. On the basis of these criteria, six occupations drawn from the six levels of occupational prestige were then selected to represent each of the three learning sources. Three sets of cartoon-like representations of the occupations (i.e., the Occupations Test) were presented to children for assessing their knowledge about roles and about their status rankings. The three major findings were: (1) personal contact with roles was the most effective learn~ ing source, followed by television and then by general culture; (2) frequent viewers knew more about television contact occupations than infrequent viewers; and (3) there was an indication of the ”homogenization” effect, whereby children were more consistent among themselves in ranking television contact occupations than in ranking personal contact and general culture occupations. It appears that the technique demonstrated in the DeFleur study may pro— vide a possible lead to the questions raised previously. To date, no attempt has been made to evaluate the DeFleur study through replication. In this context, the present research is proposed to replicate the DeFleur study in Japan, based on the following considerations: 1. While television ownership has reached more than 20 million households in Japan, the problem of the effects of television on children has long been one of the major questions confronting Japanese communication researchers. Some attempts have been made to investigate the influence of tele- vision upon the child's view of the world of work (e.g., Yoda ed., 1964). Thus, the present study may provide relevant information not only to the DeFleur study but to the repertory of Japanese studies. The data obtained in Japan as a non-Western coun~ try may increase the generalizability of the DeFleur hypotheses much more than those collected in Western countries. For example, a replication study3 done in Japan on the hypotheses proposed by Himmelweit and others (1958) tests the limits of generalizability of certain propositions. Although some discrepancies exist in rankings of some occupations between the United States and Japan, there is an extremely high level of agree- ment as to the relative prestige of a wide range of specific occupations between the two countries (Inkels and Rossi, 1956). Thus, the results of the present study, which deals in part with occu- pational prestige, aredirectly comparable to those of the DeFleur study. 3See Furu (1962). It is the purpose of this study: (1) to investi— gate the relative contribution of television, as compared with other types of contact, as a learning source for children's occupational knowledge; (2) to find out the relationships which exist between children's occupational knowledge and their media exposure habits; and (3) to probe the extent to which the TV portrayals of various occupations standardize children's conceptions of the world of work. While the present research is concerned with the cumulative effect of television, its methodological ap- proach is restricted to survey research. Even with this limitation, the present study may be of high value. First, little systematic research has been done regarding the potential of television as a source of incidental learn- ing. Second, the present data may provide some answer to the question as to what specific part television plays in the socialization of children. Third, more empirical evidence is needed to ascertain the ”homogenization” ef- fect of television. CHAPTER II TELEVISION VIEWING AND INCIDENTAL LEARNING Much has been written in regard to the potential of television as a source for incidental learning of vari- ous topics for children. Surprisingly, very little is as yet known regarding the complex processes by which tele- vision has an effect upon the child's knowledge under voluntary viewing conditions. In this chapter, attention will be focused on how children learn about the world of work while watching television at home. Incidental Learning Various views and explanations are given to de- scribe the process of incidental learning. Maccoby and Wilson (1957, p. 76) discuss "observational learning” from films as follows: all the leading learning theories emphasize that the to-be learned response must somehow be made to occur in the learning organism, not just in a model, before its association with a given set of conditions can be strengthened. Yet it is evident that viewers of movies and television dramas do learn much of the content of dramatic programs, at least to the extent of being able to recall subsequently many details of the characters actions, and they sometimes incorporate material thus learned into their own overt behavior. 10 Krugman and Hartley (1970) examine ”passive learn- ing" from television. Comparing active and purposive learning at school, they regard passive learning at home as learning that is typically effortless, responsive to animated stimuli, amenable to artificial aid to relaxation, and characterized by an absence of resistance to what is learned. Similarly, Schramm and others (1961, pp. 75—76) present the following views: Most of a child's learning from television . . . is incidental learning. By this we mean the learning tEat takes place when a viewer goes to television for entertainment and stores up certain items of informa- tion without seeking them. The idea of going purposely to television at home, to seek information, is a relatively uncommon behavior, learned later, and likely to be restricted in large part to the small percentage of children who are active reality seekers. In actuality, the child may not learn anything from television simply through watching. Schramm and others (1961, pp. 76-78) assume that the extent of a child's in— cidental learning from television depends on his ability to learn, his needs at the moment, and what he pays atten- tion to. Since brighter children can learn more from any kind of experience than duller children, Schramm and others suggest the following five principles on incidental learn- ing from television, taking into account ”needs” and "attention” factors: ll 1. A child is more likely to pay attention to and store up some fact or behavior if it is new to him. 2. Television is an especially effective agent on incidental learning while the child is still young because at that time it seems so real. 3. The amount of incidental learning from television depends in part on the amount of identification with a television character. 4. An item is more likely to be picked out of an entertainment context and remembered if it is useful to the child. 5. The child is more likely to learn and act on some- thing he believes will work. Of these, the principle of identification appears to be an important one in understanding the processes of television viewing and incidental learning. Gaer (1961) demonstrated that identification with television characters would play an important role in program preference. Maccoby and Wilson (1957, p. 76) assume that ”a viewer's learning of the actions of movie characters is enhanced if he reproduces these actions himself, at least covertly, during the screen portrayal.” It seems that identifica- tion is an important factor in determining the extent of the child's learning from television. In an attempt to speculate on how children learn about the world of work from television, the five princi- ples presented above will be applied in a discussion of the process of television viewing under voluntary viewing conditions at home. 12 The Process of Television Viewing The process of television viewing is generally con- ceived as consisting of three successive phases.4 The first phase deals with the selection process of television and its programs before viewing, the second phase with the reaction process in viewing some programs, and the third phase with the reinforcement and effect process after viewing. In the following, children's viewing behavior will be traced through each of these phases, in order to understand their incidental learning from television. The Selection Process When a child comes to television, he has just chosen the medium from a variety of activities. Thus, the first question should be asked: Why has he selected tele- vision rather than any other activity? In examining some psychological forces that lead children to television rather than some alternative activity, Schramm and others (1961, p. 62) assume: ”. television has come into use, and children have given it the great amount of time they have given it, because it is seen to be a way of meeting certain important needs, and the best way of meeting them among known and available 4The present model is based on Carter (1962) and Emery and Martin (1957). 13 alternatives.” By "certain important needs," they refer to the need for escape from conflicts and frustrations of the child's daily life. There seems little doubt that every child has con- flicts and frustrations to some extent. However, it may also be true that some children have more conflicts and frustrations than do other children. Thus, Maccoby (1954) hypothesized that children would spend more time watching television if they were highly frustrated in real life than if they were not. She found that the amount of tele— vision viewing was a function of social class: i.e., young children in the upper~middle class who experienced difficulty in the parent—child relationship (thus the higher degree of frustrations) spent more time watching television than those in the lower-middle class. Some- what contrary to the Maccoby findings, Bailyn (1959) found that there was no significant relationship between having personal problems and the amount of exposure to pictorial media such as television, movies, and comic books. It was found, however, that older children who have many personal problems and are rebelliously independent, are more likely to expose themselves heavily to the pictorial media, per- haps for escape. As soon as children have chosen television from a variety of activities, they must now select one program at a time from a list of alternative programs. Since children 14 appear to prefer the ”fantasy" type of program to the "reality” type by a ratio of 20 to 1,5 they are likely to select one of the fantasy type of programs such as westerns, situation comedies, crime drama, and so on. Further, ac- cording to the Himmelweit study (1958) and the Schramm study (1961), young audiences from the age of six years upwards also appear to be very much interested in so-called ”adult TV fare." Riley and Riley (1951) found that radio and tele— vision programs which were characterized by violence, action and aggression, were more popular with non-members of peer groups because they use the programs for sheer escape. In particular, this liking remained strongest among older children who were more frustrated in wanting to belong to and be accepted by peer groups. Similarly, Bailyn (1959) found that boys who were rebelliously inde- pendent, who got spanked, were not restricted on exposure time, and who had low intelligence scores were more likely to prefer the ”aggressive hero” type of content, including such programs as westerns, crime, spy and war, and space. Thus, as with the amount of television viewing, aggressive TV programs are more likely to be liked by children who are highly frustrated in real life, for such content may 5The ratio is suggested by Schramm and others (1961, p. 69). 15 provide them with escape or wish-fulfillment and meet their needs accordingly. There is little empirical evidence regarding the reasons why children like adult TV fare. However, accord- ing to Klapper (1960, p. 209), the following are posited as the main reasons for viewing adult TV shows: (1) child— ren have desires to know the adult world; (2) family viewing itself is regarded by children as a ”grown up” activity; (3) late evening viewing is adult sanctioned; and (4) evening programs are attractive. In light of facts on heavy viewing by children possibly to meet their needs, there probably is a great chance that they will learn something from the content of those aggressive programs or adult TV fare that provide new, real, or useful experiences to them. The Reaction Process Following the selection of programs, the child enters into the viewing situation. Since he is motivated to satisfy his needs through watching a particular pro— gram, his motivational states are considered as ”goal- strivings.” This may be particularly true for highly frustrated children, since they want to express aggression vicariously while watching aggressive programs. However, many experiments with children indicate that aggressive content in television is more likely to increase the 16 amount of aggressiveness or instigate aggressive tendencies rather than to reduce it (Berkowitz, 1963a). That is to say, if satisfaction or wish-fulfillment results in the reduction of tension or aggression, which is derived from conflicts and frustrations, the findings of prior experi- ments suggest that it may not happen in the viewing situa- tion. In addition, Himmelweit and others (1958) found that detective, murder and crime thrillers tended to frighten adolescents as well as young children, and also that some incidents in horror programs, space fiction, and some other dramatizations frightened young children. Yet, this type of programming appears to be children's favorite. What is the underlying psychological mechanism of tele- vision viewing? Part of the answer is provided by Martin and Emery (1957, pp. 14-15) as follows: In the sense that there may be goal regions in the programmes it is more reasonable to identify them with the climax or series of climaxes that occur within the story. Serial programmes throw some light on this problem. They are usually organized so that the end of each part corresponds with incom- plete climax. The resultant tensions toward comple- tion are resolved by further viewing. . . . In the extreme case of a viewer entering the situation seething with anger and desire to do violence to someone who has just frustrated him this concept would lead us to think that he will only react to scenes that fit his anger. This does not fully ac- cord with experience. Such a viewer may, depending upon the programme, quickly forget his anger and be laughing at the antics or sympathizing with the dilemmas of the actors. . . . In the absence of disruptive barriers to easy per- ception it seems that even if nothing more than the curiosity of the viewer is involved he will attend 17 the programme. Curiosity probably represents the minimum level of forces that will sustain a person in the viewing situation. It appears, then, that once children enter into the viewing situation, they are more likely to be involved in or react to what is shown on television. The key to the child's involvement in the viewing situation is ”identification” with characters on the screen. As discussed previously, children are likely to select so-called ”TV drama,” such as westerns, situation comedies, crime, and so on. The most typical reaction in viewing such dramatic productions is said to be ”identifi- cation” (Maccoby and Wilson, 1958). According to Freudian theory, identification is defined as ”the method by which a person takes over the features of another person and makes them a corporate part of his own personality” (Hall and Lindsay, 1957, p. 46). Thus, in identifying with a character in a television program, children may tend to suffer, feel, and act, as he does on the screen. Gaer (1961) found that viewers, children, teen- agers, and adults, would identify more strongly with members of their own age group. She also found that teen— agers preferred to watch programs containing characters with whom they most closely identified, while children and adults did not. Maccoby and Wilson (1958, p. 76) assume that ”when a viewer becomes absorbed in a dramatic production, he identifies himself, at least momentarily, 18 with one or more of the characters." They add: ”the viewer, in fantasy, puts himself in the place of a charac- ter and momentarily feels that what is happening to that character is happening to himself." Thus they hypothesized that viewers would identify themselves with the character whose actions were most relevant to the viewers' needs and to the character who was most similar to the viewer in major social characteristics such as age, race and sex. They found that a child identified with the like-sexed leading character and with the character whose social class corresponded with the viewer's aspired class rather than his membership class. It was also found that children tended to remember somewhat better the actions and words of the character with whom they identified, but that the advantage in learning did not apply equally to all the actions of the viewer's chosen character. Maccoby and others (1958) extended their investigation to determine whether viewers would watch mostly their own character, or whether they would watch the person with whom their chosen character was interacting. They found that males spent more time watching the hero, and that female viewers spent more time looking at the heroine. Zojonc (1954) showed that children would rather be similar to the character who was successful than the character who was unsuccessful, regardless of the methods 19 used to make him successful. He found that children in- corporated the values of the characters with whom they identified. These investigations seem to suggest that the child's incidental learning from television is enhanced if he can identify with the character portrayed in a dra- matic TV production, perhaps because he likes the program, because he spends more time watching the character with whom he identifies than other characters, or because he wishes to be like the character with whom he identifies. In addition to identification, there is some evidence to indicate that the child's incidental learning from television is increased through ”imitation.”6 As Schramm (1964, p. 13) points out: There is no doubt that children imitate some of the fashions and customs they see on television. They 'play out' television situations, and 'take the parts of' their favorite television heroes and heroines.” Bandura and others (1961) hypothesized and found that young children exposed to aggressive adult models reproduced a good volume of aggression resembling that of the adult models. This hypothesis was confirmed in a 6According to Lazowick (1955, p. 175), ”. identification refers to the action of the entire per- sonality, while imitation is more restrictive in terms referring to isolated skills or acts.” 20 subsequent experiment, when an aggressive film was used as a stimulus rather than an actual model (Bandura and others, 1963). In the second experiment, children saw a film of an adult hitting and kicking a ”bobo-doll”--i.e., a large balloon-like doll with weights in the feet which could be used as a kind of a punching bag. On a subse— quent occasion, when something had happened to make children feel irritated or frustrated, they were taken one at a time into a room which contained a bobo-doll as well as other toys. Bandura and others found that chil— dren who had seen the film imitated quite exactly what they had seen in it, while children who had not seen the film did not do this. Siegel (1958) provided two groups of children two different radio presentations of the role of a taxi driver; i.e., an aggressive driver and a non— aggressive driver. Children were later asked to respond to a story completion test containing two situations in- volving a taxi driver; i.e., one story similar to a story heard in the radio presentation and one unlike any radio presentation. Siegel found that children who heard of the aggressive driver attributed more aggression to the taxi driver than did those who heard of the non-aggressive driver, but only in the situation similar to the radio presentation. These experiments suggest that children learn adult behavior such as occupational roles through imitating 21 adult models which appeared on television. In this re— gard, Bandura and Walters (1963, p. 49) assume that pictorially presented models, mainly through television, may ”play a major part in shaping behavior and in modify— ing social norms and thus exert a strong influence on the behavior of children and adolescents.” The Reinforcement Process It should be noted that the immediate effect of a single program may not persist for a long time. In a discussion of the effects of media violence, Berkowitz (1964b, p. 45) states: ”The emotional reaction produced by film violence probably dies away rather rapidly as the viewer enters new situations and encounters new stimuli.” Similarly, Maccoby (1963, p. 124) suggests: One can show them a single program or movie and ques- tion them afterward to discover effects of this one experience upon their attitudes. But attitudes acquired from one program might be counteracted by an opposite attitude presented in the next program the child saw. Children select fantasy programs with reference to their existing needs and may do so continuously. They may identify with some characters in dramatic TV produc- tions in terms of "perceived similarity" of personality and needs as well as of "objective similarity" such as age, sex, and so on (Himmelweit and others. 1958, p. 404). Through continued viewing, children are likely to store 22 some items of information which were obtained from tele- vision through identification or through imitation, regardless of whether the information acquired is useful 01‘ not. Himmelweit and others (1958) suggest five princi— ples of the conditions under which the maximal effect is likely to occur: 1. If the values or views recur from program to pro- gram. If the values are presented in dramatic form so that they evoke primarily emotional reactions. If they link with the child‘s immediate needs and interests. If the viewer tends to be uncritical of and attached to the medium. If through his friends, parents, or immediate environment, the viewer is not already supplied with a set of values which would provide a standard against which to assess the views offered on television. According to Schramm and others (1961), the average child begins to watch television at age two, and from three to sixteen he spends more time on television than on school. There seems little doubt that television may affect chil- dren, one way or another, over a long period of time. However, as Maccoby (1963, p. 125) clearly points out: television is not the only, and not even the major influence upon children's attitudes and values in most spheres of life. . . . It is in the area of unfamiliar, where parents have not yet made clear their own point of view and where the child has little real life experience to use as a guideline, that television will influence beliefs and attitudes and establish stereotypes. 23 It is with this line of reasoning that the present study is concerned. Television Viewing and Occupational Knowledge The present research focuses on the relative con— tribution of television, as compared with other sources, as a learning source for children's occupational know— ledge. The child's conceptual learning of the world of work is considered to be an important part of the sociali— zation process. Young children must gradually acquire information concerning the characteristics and conse- quences of various occupational roles and statuses so that they may prepare themselves to choose the right kind of occupation in the future. Such knowledge is also re- quired for children as members of society, in the sense that through role-expectations, they may be able to inter— act effectively with adults holding various positions. Most of the child's socialization is said to occur deliberately within the family, the school, or other formal institutions (Broom and Selznick, 1968). However, socialization concerning the occupational structure is assumed to take place largely through direct personal contact with people at work, through conversation with parents and neighbors, or through exposure to mass media 24 such as television, movies, comic books, etc. That is, television constitutes just one of the many sources of information concerning the labor force. Yet, as discussed on the preceding pages, TV is viewed as a major source of occupational information because of the great amount of time children spend watching, particularly adult TV fare, and also because of its potential as an incidental learn— ing source of occupational information. The pertinent question then is how much television contributes to the child's knowledge about the world of work. In an attempt to measure children's knowledge about various occupational roles and their status rankings, DeFleur (1966) selected direct personal contact, vicarious contact via television, and limited personal contact as three distinct sources of occupational information. Direct personal contact with roles was seen to be the most effective learning source, since actual personal con- tact serves not only as an initial learning source but as a reinforcement and retention factor. Television was chosen to represent vicarious contact, because it provides a great deal of indirect information about jobs in the various mass media. Limited personal contact was added to make a distinction from personal contact. Thus, DeFleur suggested three hypotheses concerning the relative effectiveness of each of the three learning sources upon 25 children's occupational role knowledge: (1) of the three categories of selected occupations (personal contact, vicarious contact and limited personal contact), children will be most familiar with occupational roles with which they have had direct personal contact; (2) occupational roles through television presentation will result in more awareness of occupational roles in the vicarious contact category than occupational roles with which children have had limited contact; and (3) as a corollary hypothesis to (1) and (2), personal contact will be a more important learning source than will be vicarious contact for acquir- ing occupational knowledge. These hypotheses were all confirmed. In subsequent research, DeFleur and DeFleur (1967) tested the three hypotheses listed above through modifi- cations of measurement techniques developed in the earlier study. In connection with television, they also attempted to analyze the relationship between role knowledge of television contact occupations and amount of television viewing, and to determine the extent of the ”homogeniza- tion" effect of television regarding children's knowledge about the world of work. In this study, one source of occupational information, "limited personal contact,” was replaced by "general culture,” which, in turn, may be defined as a complex of many information sources for all occupations, particularly for those which are widely 26 understood by the adults in the community but rarely seen by the child, either in person or on television. As a result, DeFleur and DeFleur present the following findings: (1) personal contact with roles was the most effective learning source, followed by television and general cul— ture; (2) heavy viewers knew more about role knowledge of television contact occupations than light viewers; (3) children were more consistent among themselves in ranking of television contact occupations than in ranking of personal contact and general culture occupations. The present research, as a replication study, set up the hypotheses to be tested on the basis of the DeFleur hypotheses and findings. Thus, the following seven hypotheses are posited: H 1: Of the three sources of occupational informa- tion, personal contact is the most effective learning source for the child's occupational role knowledge, television is the next most effective, and general culture is the least effective. H 2: Of the three sources of occupational informa— tion, personal contact is a more effective learning source for the child's occupational status knowledge than either television or general culture. H 3: The more the child spends watching television, the more he will have role knowledge of tele- vision contact occupations. H 4: The more the child spends watching television, the more he will have status knowledge of television contact occupations. 27 H 5: The more the child is exposed to pictorial media, the more he will have role knowledge of telee vision contact occupations. H 6: The more the child is exposed to pictorial media, the more he will have status knowledge of tele— vision contact occupations. H 7: Children will be more consistent among themselves in ranking of television contact occupations than in ranking of either personal contact or general culture occupations. Of these, Hypothesis 2 is proposed as a corollary hypothesis to Hypothesis 1. Regarding the influence of television upon children's rankings of occupations, DeFleur and DeFleur (1967, p. 787) conclude that "tele— vision is a more potent source of occupational status knowledge than either personal contact or the general culture.” In spite of this, Hypothesis 2 is posited be— cause of the following. DeFleur (1966) found that occupational role awareness preceded status knowledge, which was determined by ”correct” status placements rather than social ranking of occupations. In the pres— ent study, status knowledge consists of two forms of measures, which will be discussed in the next chapter, and Hypothesis 2 deals with status knowledge as deter- mined by correct status placements. Thus, if Hypothesis 1 is correct, it seems reasonable to assume that personal contact also serves as a more important learning source for the child's status knowledge than either television or general culture. 28 Hypothesis 5 is also included especially for the present study. Movies and comic books also portray various occupations. A recent survey of children in Japan shows that there was no significant difference in amount of comic book reading between heavy and light viewers (Pro- gram Research Department of NHK, 1970, No. 9, p. 15). Thus, the intention is to investigate the relationship between the child's knowledge of television contact occu- pations and amount of his exposure to pictorial media as a whole, in order to compare the findings for Hypothesis 5 with those for Hypothesis 3. Hypotheses 4 and 6 are proposed following the same reasonings as provided for Hypotheses 2 and 5, respectively. CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY This study was designed to evaluate the hypotheses and research techniques suggested by DeFleur and DeFleur (1967), using a sample of Japanese children. While a great many social and cultural differences exist between the United States and Japan, an attempt was made to follow the DeFleur study as closely as possible so that cross- cultural comparisons could be accomplished. Community and Sample Selection The DeFleur study was conducted with 237 children in Bloomington, Indiana; a small midwestern city with a population of 35,000 and the home of Indiana University.7 It was not possible, of course, to locate a Japanese community having similar characteristics to the city of Bloomington, simply because there is no such city in Japan that has been developed by the foundation of a university. In a search for a valid comparison, the city of Kofu in 7The information was provided by Melvin DeFleur through personal correspondence. Also see DeFleur and DeFleur (1967, p. 778). 29 l/ 30 the prefecture of Yamanashi was selected for the present research, taking into account the following conditions: 1. Although Yamanashi is located just west of Tokyo metropolis, it appears to have maintained its local characteristics without significant change. Perhaps because of its natural and geographical conditions surrounded by high mountains. In addition, with the rank of 17th, it is considered to be at the medium level in political, economic, social, and cultural development among 46 Japanese prefectures. 2. Kofu is the capital of Yamanashi and serves as the center for political, economic, and cultural activities in the prefecture. It is widely known as the main gate to various recreational and reli— gious sightseeing places. With a population of 170,000 it is regarded as a medium sized city in Japan. 3. At the time of the present research, in the spring of 1970, there were three VHF and Sue UHF tele- vision stations in the local area. Of these, one VHF station was providing educational and cultural programming only. Since the city of Kofu as a whole seemed to be too large to be included, its north side only was selected to serve as the community under study. Several conditions were taken into consideration in selecting this community. First, it is clearly separated from the downtown section of Kofu by the national railways' tracks, thus commonly called Senro-Kita (north of the railway tracks). Second, the area consists of both urban and rural sections, with 8See a NHK report (Program Research Department, 1970, No. 7, p. 14). 9DeFleur (1964) reported that four major stations were in operation in the city of Bloomington. 31 one quarter of the city's population living there. Third, the only national university in the prefecture is situated in the central part of the community. It was felt that the data collected from children in this community could possibly provide relevant information for the purposes of the present study. Following the selection of the community, a sample of children had to be selected. There are five public elementary schools in the north side of Kofu. From these, three schools were selected on the basis of their geograph- ical locations representing various sections of the community. A 15% systematic sample of 179 children was then drawn from the list of all students in the fourth and sixth grades who were attending the three schools selected. Unlike the DeFleur study which used seven different age groups from 6 to 12-13 years as a sample, children from two grade levels only were selected for the present re- search, in order to ease some administrative problems involved in the sampling and data collection procedures. Of 179 children sampled, the data of 9 children were ex- cluded from the analysis because of their incomplete interviews or diary-keeping. Thus, the data from a total of 170 children were used for the present analysis. Of these, 90 children were in the fourth grade and 80 in the sixth grade. Their ages ranged from 9 to 12 years, with the average age of 10.6. I/ 32 Development of the Measuring Instrument The measuring instrument used for assessing chil- dren's occupational knowledge was a Japanese version of the Occupations Test, which was first developed by DeFleur (1966) and later modified by DeFleur and DeFleur (1967). While the development of the Japanese test followed basi- cally the same procedures as demonstrated in the DeFleur study, some modifications and simplifications were made in accordance with their degree of importance to the present study. In an attempt to select ”television contact occu- pations," content analysis of TV programs was first carried out, using a daily review of several programs presented in the TV column of a local newspaper, The Yamanashi Nichinichi (The Yamanashi Daily) during the period of January 1 to June 30, 1969. Those programs selected for the review appeared to be either of highly informational value or of popular entertainment value, most of those programs were telecast in the evening. The review of a popular enter- tainment program such as TV drama contains a short summary of the story, including actors' names, both central and supporting. Here is an example of a review introducing the series, "Two Detectives," which appeared in the TV column of The Yamanashi Nichinichi, May 13, 1970. A salesman called Nakahara was found dead near the Tachikawa family. Detective Sergeant Katsumata (Shinsuke Ashida) and Detective Tamiya (Akira Nakao) 33 from the First Investigation Section immediately called at the Tachikawas. They were received by the daughter of the family, Mizue (Emiko Nishio), who is well known among the neighbors because of her beauty. She is still not married at the age of over 30 years. Mizue responded to the questions raised by Katsumata and Tamiya with a calm reply that she had no idea about the incident nor about the victim. In the meantime, Katsumata and Tamiya questioned the neighbors and searched through Nakahara's room. As the result, they came to believe that Mizue and Nakahara had been dating for some time. Yet, Mizue, who is proud of her beauty, kept insisting that she had nothing to do with the incident at all, and she took an airy attitude toward them. . Following DeFleur (1964, p. 60), the subject for analysis was defined as "those programs which depicted people interacting in modern (as opposed to historical) settings, where recognizable work or occupational activi- ties were being carried out.” All programs reviewed in the TV column which fit this definition were then selected from the newspapers over a period of 181 days. From these, 133 different occupational roles were identified with a total of 713 appearances from all roles described in the reviews. In the example presented above, two detectives were included for analysis but the heroine was not, simply because her occupational role was not clearly indicated. Table 1 shows the results of such content analysis. Since DeFleur (1964) used special procedures for content analysis through viewing a sample of programs, it is not possible to compare the Japanese data with the American data in a strict sense. For the purpose of interest only, the 133 occupational roles which appeared on television in Japan 34 Table 1. Relative Frequency of Appearance on Television of 24 Professional Categories and Occupational Groupings. Frequency of Appearance Category or Grouping* Japan U.S.A.* Secretaries and office workers 15.0% 5.2% Educators 12.1 2.5 Executives, managers G superintendents 11.2 4.1 Occupations related to journalism 10.9 2.7 Occupations related to the law 10.2 29.1 Owners of small business 8.8 6.1 Artists, writers 6 composers 5.9 0.7 Skilled workers, technicians G specialists 4.6 3.0 Occupations related to health 8 medicine 3.9 8.9 Occupations related to entertainment business 3.1 9.8 Salesmen 2.2 0.9 Bartenders and waiters 2.1 1.4 Taxi, truck 8 bus drivers 2.0 2.5 Unskilled workers 1.3 1.4 Personal servants 0.8 5.9 Semi-skilled workers 0.7 3.0 Hazardous or adventurous occupations 0.4 1.8 Miscellaneous lower professions 0.4 0.9 Foremen 0.3 0.9 Members of the clergy 0.1 1.4 Ranch owners 0.1 0.5 Military personnel 0.0 5.0 Bank tellers G hotel clerks 0.0 1.4 Miscellaneous service workers 3.7 1.1 (N=713) (N=440) *Adapted from DeFleur (1964, p. 63). The order of listing categories or groupings were rearranged in order to demonstrate the Japanese data. 35 were grouped into 24 categories as suggested by DeFleur and are presented with the American data. The selection of both "personal contact occupations" and ”general culture occupations" was carried out simul- taneously, based on the examination of local occupational structure. As discussed in the previous chapter, personal contact occupations refer to jobs with which the average child comes into contact during his normal life in the community, whereas general culture occupations refer to jobs which are widely understood by adults in the community but rarely seen by children, either in person or on tele- vision. On the basis of these definitions, a large number of candidate occupations were initially selected for each type of contact through inspection of parents' occupations among children who were attending the three public elemen- tary schools under study (Table 2), and through review of the local characteristics of Kofu as presented on the previous page. These occupations were then compared with the results of a recent survey of occupational rankings, Obtained from a sample of adults in Tokyo (Appendix A) and reduced to 23 candidate occupations representing various levels of occupational prestige. Since the occupational structure of a capital city such as Kofu reflects that of Tokyo on a smaller scale, it was felt that the Tokyo data could be used as guide lines without any serious vari— ations. The 23 candidate occupations selected and their 36 Table 2. Classification of Parents' Occupations. Elementary School A School B School C School Total Farming and Fishing 6.6% l 4% 0.3% 2.6% Forestry 0.8 0.0 0.4 0.4 Mining 1.4 0.0 1.0 0.9 Construction 9.4 9.6 9.6 9.5 Production 12.5 7.3 10.2 10.2 Wholesale and Retail 13.9 8.8 12.4 12.0 Transportation 13.6 9.0 14.3 12.7 Services 12.3 7.5 18.1 13.6 Power and Gas 4.5 4.4 4.7 4.6 Finance 4.3 5.6 2.7 4.0 Real Estate 0.4 1.1 0.3 0.5 Public Service 20.3 39.3 20.7 25.3 Other 0.0 6.0 5.4 3.8 (N=l,058) (N=840) (N=1,413) (N=3,3ll) 37 corresponding ranks (from highest to lowest) were: (1) prefectual governor--10; (2) company president--12; (3) medical doctor--l7; (4) civil engineer--24; (5) bank manager--32; (6) mining engineer--32; (7) company section head--33; (8) elementary school teacher--34; (9) Buddhist priest--37; (10) inn owner--44; (ll) power—house techni- cian--45; (12) bell captain--56; (13) barber-—60; (l4) auto mechanic--63; (15) train station employee—~64; (16) automobile driver--69; (17) postman--72; (18) train porter-—76; (l9) grocery store c1erk--8l; (20) printer--82; (21) service station attendant--87; (22) baker--89; and (23) door-to-door salesman-~96. To this list, nine candidate occupations were selected on the basis of the results of the content anal- ysis of television programs. The nine TV candidate occupations and their corresponding ranks were: (1) scholar--1l; (2) airline pilot--19; (3) writer--28; (4) newspaper reporter—-3l; (5) detective--42; (6) guardsman-— 62; (7) department store clerk—-70; (8) laborer--92; (9) window cleaner-~95. It should be noted that since 9 out of 32 candi- date occupations did not have exactly corresponding ranks in the list in Appendix A, their ranks assigned were not absolute. For example, the rank of "company president” in Kofu must be lower than the 12th in a hierarchical order. The same is true for the rank of "bank manager." ?' 4____ H? *_- 38 In order to make the final selection of six occu- pations each from a set of personal contact, television contact, and general culture occupations, the names of 32 candidate occupations were presented to 148 children in the fourth and sixth grades from two public elementary schools in the south side of the city of Kofu. They were asked to respond to the following questions for each occu- pation: 1. Have you ever seen this man? 2. If the answer to Question 1 is ”Yes": Where or by what means did you see him? 3. Have you ever talked to this man? Since many children indicated that they had seen most of the 32 candidate occupations either in person or on television, the third question, ”Have you ever talked to this man?," was used to distinguish personal contact occupations from general culture occupations: e.g., those occupations which children had seen in person and had talked to more frequently than others were considered to be the best candidate occupations for personal contact. On the basis of the results of this pre-test, three sets of six occupations each were finally selected. The six personal contact occupations selected were: (1) doctor; (2) company section head; (3) Buddhist priest; (4) barber; (5) postman; and (6) baker. The six occupa- tional roles selected as television contact occupations 39 were: (1) scholar; (2) airline pilot; (3) detective; (4) guardsman; (5) department store clerk; and (6) window cleaner. The six general culture occupations selected were: (1) company president; (2) bank manager; (3) power- house technician; (4) bell captain; (5) train porter; and (6) door-to-door salesman. Table 3 indicates the selected occupations with their corresponding ranks. In examining three sets of selected occupations, one might question the selection of ”company section head." This occupation had to be selected due to the fact that both "civil engineer” and "mining engineer"--presumably better candidates at this level—-had to be dropped according to the results of the pre-test. It should be noted that the pre-test was adminis- tered with a paper-pencil test rather than with the use of cartoon-like cards. In spite of this, almost similar re- sults were obtained from the selected children in the main survey when the pre-test question was given to them (Table 4). Each of the selected occupations was then portrayed in a cartoon-like representation on a separate 5 x 4 inch card. Care was taken to minimize the number of cues in drawing, since the kind of cues provided might affect the child's responses to some of the questions which would be used for assessing his role knowledge. All were male occupations, each portrayal was stylized and simplified, 40 .cofipmmsooo many ou so>fiw mm: senses >Es< omcomom-maom map mo Mama ecu .< xflvcomm< ca oHanflm>m ma Mama ofinmpmeoo o: oucfim .moflupomopm Opm>fipm mo xpomwm map zpfiz mcfifimov coflmeSUOO esp mo wcwx So: w ma manex om mOHmm poow-ou-sooa mm hoemmfiu Becca: mm pmxwm MHOHO on pougom games on anum pamEppwmom Nu cmapmom om :fimummu Haom No «swamvhwsw co Hmcamm ewflufi::OOp me Omsoapozom Ne o>flpomuoo um pmoflsm pmflnwwsm om Hommcme Mcmm ma uofiflm mafiasfl< mm ewe: soapuom kamQEou NH peowwmopm kcmmEou HH Hmaoaom NH Houoom mcoflpNQSOUO Mama maoflummsooo Mama mcoflummzooo Mama manpfisu Hmpoeow pompcou cowmw>OHOH pompcou Hm:OmHOd .chHuwQSUoo wepooaom one op pocmwmm< mxcmm .m manmb 41 Table 4. Average Numbers of Three Types of Contact Occupations Seen, Seen via Television, and Talked to by Children (N=l70). Personal Television General Contact Contact Culture Average number: Number of occupations seen* 5.3 4.9 3.1 Number of occupations seen via TV only** 0.7 3.2 1.6 Number of occupations talked to*** 2.7 0.7 0.5 Standard deviation: Number of occupations seen 0.8 1.4 1.8 Number of occupations seen via TV only 0.7 1.5 1.5 Number of occupations talked to 1.2 0.7 0.8 *The average number of occupations seen in person or via television out of six occupations selected. **The average number of occupations seen via television only out of the average number of occupatlons seen within each set. ***The average number of occupations talked to out of the average number of occupations seen. 42 and the same "man” appeared in each. In addition, the name of each occupation was printed in the Japanese alphabet to clearly show children what this occupation was. Figure 1 shows three sets of role representations used in the Japa— nese version of the Occupations Test. These cards served as stimuli in assessing the child's knowledge of the role characteristics and the hierarchical order of each occupa- tion. Data Collection Data collection consisted of two forms: (1) personal interviews with the Occupations Test; and (2) diaries of daily activities. The selected children were interviewed during and after school hours by their classroom teachers, who re- ceived special instructions. Unfortunately, it was not possible to bring outside interviewers into the school due to local school conditions. It was also difficult to con- duct efficient interviewing at the child's home because of the typical openness of Japanese house settings. In order to minimize the "halo" effect, a special interviewer's manual was developed to indicate how to score the degree of children's role knowledge with sample answers attached. Each interviewer had six to ten interviews to be completed. Administering of the Occupations Test averaged one and one- half hours. 43 I! pmwe mQOHummDooo map CH poms mcoflpmpemmmnmom maom .H madman 07; A. a; on... vxwhceg n «unwvflficéwé Q,)v3€3Q.v.\n. £¢QVQC®UQEI :1ng CVJ$§ 7flwqeém Q32eeTZN \Ava\§ b .5 t 15 D+v\ QuClntxt .be 1.. A» Qnmtewvm alive»??? 44 Each child was asked to keep a diary of daily activities for three weekend days, including Friday, Sat- urday and Sunday. The same period was applied to all children. Personal data such as IQ score, occupation of the head of the household, and educational levels of both parents were copied from the child's school record. In case the information concerning occupation and education was not sufficient, the child was asked to acquire it from his parents at the time when the diary method was being carried out. Operationalization of Variables In an attempt to test the hypotheses presented in the previous chapter, two dependent and four independent variables were empirically indexed in various manners. In addition, four control variables were introduced to see any possible interaction effects operating with the inde- pendent variables. The operational procedures for all the variables will be discussed first, followed by a restate- ment of the hypotheses. Dependent Variables Role knowledge is defined as the degree of under- standing about the roles expected from any holder of a given occupational status. The Occupations Test was de- signed to measure the child's knowledge about five 45 different aspects of a given occupational role: i.e., (l) role requirements; (2) role relationships; (3) physical environment; (4) cultural artifacts, tools, symbols; and (5) role prerequisites. (See Appendix B for explanation of test items and grading procedures.) The child was asked to answer the following five questions relating to the five aspects presented above: 1. What kind of work does this man do? 2. Whom does he work for? 3. Where does he do his work? 4. What kinds of things does he use in his job? 5. Does he have to prepare in some special way to get this job? For each question, points from zero to three were given depending upon the child's performance. The first three questions were given arbitrary weights of two and the last two questions were given weights of unity, simply because the former appeared to be much more difficult than the latter.10 Thus, a total score on role knowledge of a given occupation could range from 0 to 24. Since there were six selected occupations representing each of the three types of contact, total scores could range between 0 and 144 per set. 10The statement was made by Melvin L. DeFleur through personal correspondence. 46 Status knowledge is defined as the degree of under- standing about the status hierarchy of given occupations. In the present research, the measures of status knowledge were obtained by: ‘(l) ranks given to six occupations within each type of contact according to occupational prestige; and (2) status scores calculated by counting "correct" status placements of the six occupations within each type of contact. In order to make the child under— stand the concept of occupational prestige, he was first asked to arrange a pair of cards, portraying "school teacher" and "bus driver," in a hierarchical order. He was then given three cards, portraying ”civil engineer,” "newspaper reporter," and "service station attendant,” for the second practice. When it was clear that the child understood what he had to do, he was presented with each set of six cards to arrange them in a hierarchical order. The status hierarchy which the child arranged within each set of cards was simply recorded, giving a rank number to each occupation. This set of responses was then compared with the "correct" status positions originally assigned. Two points were given to each correct placement and one point was given to the "near” correct placement: i.e., the one which was placed one level of rank up or down in a hierarchical order. Thus, total status scores could range from 0 to 12 per set. 47 In measuring both role knowledge and status knowl- edge, each one of the three sets of cards and six cards within each set were randomly ordered and presented to the child, in order to avoid possible serial effects. Independent Variables Type of contact with roles is defined as the source of learning through which children may acquire in- formation concerning occupational roles and their status rankings. The three main types of contact with occupational roles were: (1) personal contact, (2) television, and (3) general culture. Each type of contact was character- ized by six selected occupations which were mainly learned. through this type of contact. Amount of television viewing,iamount of viewing adult TV fare and amount of exposure to pictorial media11 are respectively the total number of minutes a child spends watching television, watching programs telecast after 8 p.m., and watching television and reading comic books for given weekend days. Each child was asked to keep a diary of daily activities for three weekend days, including Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The diary was sectioned by 30 minutes interval on a table form. A list of the description of daily activities was provided to help the llSince children rarely go to movies nowadays, amount of viewing films was not collected. 48 child indicate the time periods spent doing any single activity. (See Appendix C for description of daily acti- vities and record form.) Control Variables The following four variables, suggested by DeFleur (1966) and DeFleur and DeFleur (1967), are expected to have some effect on children's occupational knowledge: (1) age, (2) sex, (3) social class, and (4) intelligence. They were controlled in the present research. Age was replaced by the child's grade level, thus fourth or sixth grade. Sex was indexed as male or female. Social class was determined by the occupational prestige level and educational level of the male head of the house- hold. Both occupational prestige and education variables were given weights of unity. Six quantitative levels were then provided for each set Of these variables, and thus a total weighted score ranged from 2 to 12 for each family. The family was classified into one of the three levels of social class: i.e., (l) upper-middle, (2) lower-middle, and (3) lower. Finally, the child's intelligence was represented by the standard score of his IQ test. 49 Hypotheses Following the Operationalization of variables, each general hypothesis will be operationalized, accom- panied by empirical hypotheses: GH 1: Of the three sources of occupational informa- tion, personal contact is the most effective learning source for the child's occupational role knowledge, television is the next most effective, and general culture is the least effective. EH l-l: Personal contact is more effective than television as a learning source for the child's occupational role knowledge. EH l—Z: Personal contact is more effective than general culture as a learning source for the child's occupational role knowledge. EH 1-3: Television is more effective than general culture as a learning source for the child's occupational role knowledge. GH 2: Of the three sources of occupational informa- tion, personal contact is a more effective learning source for the child's occupational status knowledge than either television or general culture. EH 2-1: Personal contact is more effective than television as a learning source for the child's occupational status knowledge. EH 2-2: Personal contact is more effective than general culture as a learning source for the child's occupational status knowledge. GH 3: The more the child spends watching television, the more he will have role knowledge of tele- vision contact occupations. GH GH CH CH 4: 6: 7: EH 3-1: EH 3-2: 50 The number of hours the child spends watching television is positively related to his role knowledge of television contact occupations. The number of hours the child spends watching adult TV fare is positively related to his role knowledge of tele- vision contact occupations. The more the child spends watching television, the more he will have status knowledge of tele- vision contact occupations. EH 4-1: EH 4-2: The number of hours the child spends watching television is positively related to his status knowledge of’ television contact occupations. The number of hours the child spends watching adult TV fare is positively related to his status knowledge of television contact occupations. The more the child is exposed to pictorial media, the more he will have role knowledge of tele- vision contact occupations. EH 5-1: The number of hours he spends watching television and reading comic books is positively related to his role knowl- edge of television contact occupations. The more the child is exposed to pictorial media, the more he will have status knowledge of television contact occupations. EH 6-1: The number of hours he spends watching television and reading comic books is positively related to his status knowledge of television contact occu- pations. Children will be more consistent among them- selves in ranking of television contact occupa- tions than in ranking of either personal contact or general culture occupations. EH 7-1: Children will be more consistent among themselves in ranking of television contact occupations than in ranking of personal contact occupations. 51 EH 7-2: Children will be more consistent among themselves in ranking of television contact occupations than in ranking of general culture occupations. Data Analysis Two statistics are utilized to test the various hypotheses proposed in the present research. They are: (1) t-test for the difference between related means, and (2) Pearson product moment correlation. Empirical Hypothesis 1—1, 1-2, 1-3, 2-1, and 2-2 will be tested using a t-test for the difference between related means (Walker and Lev, 1953). In addition, mixed design analysis of variance (i.e., treatments by subjects by subgroups) will be applied for testing the significance of the interaction between independent and control vari- ables (Scheffé, 1959). Empirical Hypothesis 3-1, 3-2, 4-1, 5-1, and 6-1 will be tested using product moment correlation coeffi- cients to determine the degree Of hypothesized relationship (McNemar, 1962). Partial correlations will then be com- puted to find out the influence of any control variable on the relationships between independent and dependent variables. For Empirical Hypothesis 7-1 and 7-2, coefficients of concordance (Siegel, 1956) will be computed for 52 children's rankings of television contact, personal con- tact, and general culture occupations, respectively. This will be done within each of the four control variables. These coefficients will then be directly compared.12 12This approach was suggested by Melvin DeFleur through personal correspondence. for the testings of seven main hypotheses proposed in the The data collected from 170 children were provided present research. In addition, several related hypotheses CHAPTER IV FINDINGS posited by DeFleur and DeFleur (1967) were also tested with available data. In the following, the findings for each main hypothesis will be presented first, followed by those for each related hypothesis. GH 1: Tests of Main Hypotheses Of the three sources of occupational informa- tion, personal contact is the most effective learning source for the child's occupational role knowledge, television is the next most effective, and general culture is the least effective. EH 1-l: EH 1-2: EH 1-3: Personal contact is more effective than television as a learning source for the child's occupational role knowledge. Personal contact is more effective than general culture as a learning source for the child's occupational role knowledge. Television is more effective than general culture as a learning source for the child's occupational role knowledge. 53 54 As shown in Table 5, the mean role-knowledge scores on personal contact, television contact, and gen- eral culture occupations are 93.4, 87.1, and 73.7, respectively. The t-values for the differences between related means are 5.39 for Empirical Hypothesis l-l, 10.00 for Empirical Hypothesis 1-2, and 8.92 for Empirical Hypothesis 1-3, all of which are significant at less than the one percent level. Empirical Hypotheses 1-1, 1-2 and 1-3 are all confirmed. Table 5. Mean Role-Knowledge Scores and Standard Deviations On Three Types of Contact Occupations (N=l70). Mean Type of Contact (SD) 1. Personal contact 93.4 (20.9) t l:2=5.39 p<.0001 t 2. Television 87.1 1:3=10.00 (21 3) t p<.0001 2:3=8.92 p<.0001 3. General culture 73.7 (22.5) Thus, General Hypothesis 1 is confirmed. These results strongly support the hypothesis, originally proposed by DeFleur and DeFleur (1967), regard- ing the relative effectiveness of television as a learning 55 source for the child's occupational role knowledge. It is important to note, however, that children learn occupa- tional roles more through direct personal contact than through television. Tables 6 to 9 show summaries of analyses of vari- ance when grade, sex, social class, and intelligence are 13 (see Tables 25 to 28 for mean role-knowledge controlled scores for these variables). From these tables, it is apparent that both grade and sex variables are signifi- cantly interacting with the independent variable. That is, sixth grade children and males know more about role knowl- edge of three types of contact occupations than fourth . grade children and females. Table 6. Mixed Design Analysis of Variance (Treatments:oHOH .m.: pomudou chomHOd omwofizoex + onEoonHmz muomwcoo HH< mopwum + .m.: manpasu Hmhmcoo .m.: + cOHmH>OHOH .m.e .m.: pompcou HmnOmHOm omwoazoex .m.: OHmEOmAOsz mpompcoo HH< oaom xom + OHSpHDU Hmhocew + scamfl>oaoe + powpmou Hegemsom omwoazocx + HomcsowAsowHo muompcou HH< mSHmum + + Campasu Hmpoeow + + eofimfl>oaoe + .m.c pomucoo Hmcomhom omwofizocx nowmpu HOV + HomcsowApowfio mpumucou HH< oHom om< «xxpzpm «annum COHpOOHHQ mSOflummsuuo manmfipm> manmwpm> wcoumm pmpflm EONHmoauomxz pompcoo mo make pcmwcomom pampnmmoweH .<.m.: gamma mweaecam .owu6H30:M Hmcoflummsooo :o momoauomzz wepmfiom sow mwcfiwcfim exp mo khweasm .mm Danae 80 .AASQHV Asmfimma eca Ramadan seem eonmmeOHme .m.e powpaoo Hmeompmm Omwmazocx + HOHHSQAHOpcmflHm mpomucou HH< mspmpm + Danuasu Hmaoemu + :oflmfl>efime + powwcou HHCOmHOd mmwOHzocx .m.c HOHHDQAsOusmfipm muomueou HH< ofiom DummmHHHOucH .m.e manpfizu Hakeemw .m.e :ofimfl>oaeh .m.c wompcou Hmcomhom omwofizocm .m.: Hozoquogwfl: mpomucou HH< msumpm + .m.: oespasu Hmpmeow + + :Oflmfi>mfioe + .m.c pomueou HmCOmHOQ omwoazocx .m.: HozoqAHonmw: mpomucou HH< OHom mmmau Hmfioom ««>©:pm «stuw :oflpoOMHQ m¢prmmsooo ofinmfipm> ofinmfihm> ecooom pmpfim womflmogpomxm pompcou we make peowcmmom peoweommwcH .<.m.: madam mwcaecflm Aconcaucouv .mm magma 81 Table 30. Mixed Design Analysis of Variance (Treatments x Subjects x Grade x TV Viewing: Dependent Variable Role Knowledge). Source of Mean Variance df Square Statistic P Grade 1 9,378.26 50.50 .0005 TV viewing 1 8,150.02 43.88 .0005 Grade x TV viewing 1 423.13 .135 Contact type 2 14,798.98 2.28 .0005 Error 76 185.72 79.69 Grade x contact type 2 1,462.29 9.73 .0005 Error 76 150.35 TV viewing x contact type 2 12.49 0.07 .934 Error 76 182.41 Grade x TV viewing x contact type 2 91.44 0.59 .558 Error 76 155.64 Not accounted for 152 Total 467 82 Table 31. Mixed Design Analysis of Variance (Treatments x Subjects x Grade x TV Viewing: Dependent Variable Status Knowledge). Source of Mean F Variance df Square Statistic P Grade 1 124.10 26.03 <.0005 TV viewing 1 2.33 0.49 .487 Grade x TV viewing 1 0.36 0.08 .784 Contact type 2 148.04 31.04 <.0005 Error 76 4.77 Grade x contact type 2 20.84 3.78 .027 Error 76 5.51 TV viewing x contact type 2 9.37 2.02 .140 Error 76 4.64 Grade x TV viewing x contact type 2 5.58 1.05 .356 Error 76 5.32 Not accounted for 152 Total 467 83 Table 32. Coefficients of Concordance Among Status Rankings of Three Types of Contact Occupations for Heavy and Light Viewers by Grade. Amount of Personal General Grade TV Viewing N Contact Television Culture 4 High 45 .58 .54 .61 Low 45 .55 .55 .71 6 High 40 .64 .77 ' .68 Low 40 .55 .76 .66 CHAPTER V SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION Summary The present research attempts to explore the potential of television as a source for incidental learn- ing of various topics for children. Following DeFleur and DeFleur (1967), this study focuses upon: (1) the relative contribution of television as a learning source for chil— dren's occupational knowledge; (2) the relationship between the child's knowledge of television contact occu- pations and his media exposure habits; and (3) the homo- genization effect of television regarding children's knowledge of the world of work. Two major dependent variables used in the present study are: (1) role knowledge; and (2) status knowledge. Role knowledge is defined as the degree of understanding about occupational roles expected from any holder of a given position, whereas status knowledge is defined as the degree of understanding about the status hierarchy of given occupations. Measures of the two dependent vari- ables were obtained from the Occupations Test especially developed for the present study. This test consists of 84 85 three sets of six cartoon-like cards, portraying various occupations drawn from six levels of occUpational pres- tige within each set. The three sets of occupations represent the three types of contact through which chil- dren may acquire information about occupational roles and their status rankings. Type of contact with roles constitutes the inde- pendent variable. The three types of contact with roles are: (1) personal contact; (2) television; and (3) gen- eral culture. It was hypothesized that personal contact would be the most effective learning source for children's occupational knowledge, followed by television and then by general culture. With respect to the relationship between occupa- tional knowledge and media exposure habits, total amount of television viewing, amount of viewing adult TV fare, and amount of exposure to pictorial media were hypothe- sized to relate positively with the child's knowledge about television contact occupations respectively. The extent to which TV portrayals of various occu- pations standardize the child's conceptions of the world of work was also investigated. It was hypothesized that children would be more consistent among themselves in rankings of television contact occupations than rankings of either personal contact or general culture occupations. 86 In addition to the main hypotheses stated above, the present study seeks to test several related hypotheses, proposed by DeFleur and DeFleur, concerning the relation- ships between occupational role knowledge and each of the age, sex, and social class variables. Stated generally, the DeFleur hypothesis is that older, male, and middle- class children know more about roles than younger, female, and lower-class children. Data were collected from 170 fourth and sixth grade children in a typical medium-sized city, west of Tokyo. The selected children were administered the Occupations Test in a personal interview situation. In addition, they were asked to keep a diary of daily activi- ties to obtain the data on their media exposure habits. As a result, personal contact was found to be the most effective learning source for children's occupational role knowledge, followed by television and then by general culture. Regarding status knowledge, however, the hypothe- sis was not confirmed, with the findings opposite to the predicted direction. Role knowledge of television contact occupations was significantly and negatively related to amount of television viewing and exposure to pictorial media. The remaining hypothesized relationships between occupational knowledge and media exposure habits were not significant. No test of significance was performed con- cerning the homogenization effect of television upon the 87 child's knowledge of the world of work. It was noted, however, that there was some indication of the-homogeniza- tion effect, particularly among children who were in the sixth grade, from upper-middle class families, and in the medium intelligence level. The present findings for related hypotheses ap- peared to be similar to those obtained in the DeFleur study, although some differences exist on the sex and social class variables between the two studies (Table 29). It should be noted that significant differences were found between the means on role knowledge of television contact occupations for each of the grade, sex, and social class variables. An attempt to investigate the relation- ships between grade and amount of television viewing failed to produce any significant interaction effects on both role knowledge and status knowledge. Discussion The findings of the present research strongly support the DeFleur hypothesis regarding the relative effectiveness of television, as compared with other sources, as a learning source for children's occupational role knowledge. Although personal contact with roles constitutes the most effective source of occupational in- formation, television appears to serve as a potent source, 88 much more effective than general culture, for the child's incidental learning of occupational roles (Table 5). However, contrary to the hypothesis, the present study found a significant and negative correlation between role knowledge of television contact occupations and amount of television viewing (Table 18). Several reasons for this negative correlation can be posited. First, as already discussed in the previous chapter, amount of television viewing and amount of viewing adult TV fare among the present sample of children are relatively low. Since tele- vision contact occupations were selected from adult TV dramas only, the amount of viewing is then less likely to be related to role knowledge of television contact occu- pations. Second, one might riase a question concerning the validity and reliability of a diary method to obtain amount of television viewing.15 The same question has to be addressed to the DeFleur approach which was based on parental reports. Third, in connection with the above, it seems that the degree of the child's preferences of adult TV fare rather than amount of television viewing is likely to determine the degree of role knowledge of television contact occupations. The product moment correlation between role knowledge of television contact occupations 5Schramm and others (1961) claim that the aided recall method is a better procedure than a diary or paren- tal estimate for children. 89 and amount of viewing adult TV fare is negative, but not significant. Finally, according to the Himmelweit study (1958) and the Schramm study (1961), more intelligent children are likely to be less interested in television and make less use of it. The present research shows that brighter children spent less time watching television than duller children, but that they knew more about television contact occupations. Similarly, children from higher social class spent less time watching television but knew more about TV roles than lower class youngsters. The combined effects of these variables may have affected the present findings. As to the homogenization effect of-television, the present research did not seem to provide sufficient data to support the DeFleur hypothesis. Yet, the highest statistical values (i.e., coefficients of concordance) were found in the rankings of television contact occupa- tions, as compared with those of personal contact and general culture occupations, among sixth grade, upper- middle class and average intelligence children, respec- tively (TablesZfl.to 24). These findings seem to indicate some homogenization effects of television on some groups of Children. It is interesting to note that the lowest coeffi- cient 0f concordance in the rankings of television contact occupations was found among fourth grade children. 90 Inspection of their score sheets revealed that it was they who ranked such occupations as "detective" and "guardsman" higher than "scholar" and "airline pilot." In an attempt to see why this should be so, all children sampled for the present study were asked to rank three sets of occupations again three months later. This time, ”company president" was included in the set of television contact occupations, while "scholar” was placed in the set of general culture occupations. Surprisingly, the results were exactly the same as those obtained three months before.16 It seems that the lowest coefficient of concordance due to such rankings of occupations may also be regarded as an indica- tion of the homogenization effect. Perhaps the most interesting findings of the pres- ent research in relation to the DeFleur study may be those dealing with the relationships between occupational role knowledge and each of the grade, sex, and social class variables. Despite the fact that a great deal of social and cultural differences exist between Japan and the United States, the present research shows similar findings to those Obtained in the DeFleur study, when taking into account some of the non-significant differences which are 16The mean status-knowledge scores on personal contact, television, and general culture occupations were 6.5, 6.9, and 8.3 in the main survey. In the follow-up survey, they were 6.6, 6.9, and 8.2 respectively. ‘_ _ , . ..._ W *,,. - 91 in the hypothesized directions. (See Tables 25 to 29.) It is interesting to note that as compared with the DeFleur findings, significant differences in the present study were found mainly on television contact occupations within each of the grade, sex, and social class variables. It seems pertinent then to speculate as to why the findings of the two studies are different regarding role knowledge of television contact occupations. The obvious answer is that as shown in Table l, the world of televised portrayals of occupations is dif- ferent between Japan and the United States. While Japanese programs appear to present a wide range of occupations, American programs concentrate on prestigious or glamorous occupations such as lawyer,entertainers,and medical doctors. Thus, differences in the frequency and extent of TV por- trayals of occupations between the two countries are likely to affect children's knowledge about TV roles over a long period of time. With respect to the sex difference in role knowl- edge, DeFleur and DeFleur (1967, p. 783) state: It can be suggested that it is precisely on these ”general culture” occupations that the sex differ- ence hypothesized are most likely to be apparent. That is, since boys and girls have equal access to ”personal contact" (Set I) and "television contact" (Set 11) occupations, it is in the remaining set where the pressures of sex-role socialization can be expected to be most evident. 92 According to the NHK survey, boys on the average spend significantly more time watching television than do girls. Even in the present study, amount of viewing is positively related to sex (r=.l4), although not signifi- cant. Thus, Japanese boys seem to have more access to television contact occupations and know more about TV roles than girls. Television viewing is generally considered to be a family activity. This is particularly true in Japan, where all family members sit around the kotatsu (specially designed foot warmer for local homes) and watch television. Perhaps, upper-middle class children may have a better opportunity to interact with parents than lower class youngsters, asking about the characteristics and conse- quences of various occupational roles portrayed on TV. Since social class is indexed in terms of the occupational prestige and educational level of the male head of the household in the present study, such parent-child inter- actions may have affected the social class differences. Interestingly enough, those children who know more about television contact occupations showed the highest consistency among themselves in ranking of television con- tact occupations. Inspection of the intercorrelation between role knowledge and status knowledge scores reveals that there is a significant high correlation (r=.24) be- tween the two scores on television contact occupations, 93 while no significant correlations exist on personal contact and general culture occupations. This may be regarded as a clear indication of the homogenization effect of tele- vision. What of the validity and reliability of the Occupa- tions Test? There are several problems to be resolved in order to increase the validity and reliability of the test. First, as DeFleur and DeFleur (1967, p. 780) admit: ”The control over learning sources achieved by this technique was not absolute. . . .” This is particularly true in the selection procedures of television contact occupations. Since very few lower levels of occupations are portrayed on television, at least in Japan, it is extremely difficult to select those occupations. In the present research, selection of lower levels of television contact occupations was done simply because of necessity. In addition, since so many varieties of occupations are portrayed on tele- vision, it is impossible to eliminate the influence of television on some personal contact and general culture occupations. It might be better to exclude the lower levels of occupations from the Occupations Test and to compare the child's knowledge of frequently portrayed occu- pations with that of personal contact and general culture occupations at similar levels Of occupational prestige. The question remains, of course, as to whether the Occupa- tions Test of that kind has social significance as well as 94 theoretical import. However, such a move may also make it easier to develop an alternate form for a reliability check. It is almost impossible to develop an equivalent form under the present procedures. Secondly, the assessment of status knowledge sought in the present study needs to be modified. In addition to counting "correct” or "near correct” placements of occupa- tions, some systematic method should be incorporated into the administration of the Occupations Test to check whether the subject has responded accurately. The House Test developed by DeFleur (1966) may be one approach. Perhaps the assessment of children's role knowledge and status knowledge should be done on separate occasion, so that sufficient time can be provided for the measurement of each knowledge.17 Such a procedure is costly, but it may certainly increase the validity of the Occupations Test. Implications for Research There has been little systematic research to deter- mine the extent to which television affects the child's knowledge of serious topics. The problem seems to lie in the question of how to measure the influence of television 17Interviewers indicated that they had a difficult time administering the Occupations Test to fourth grade chil- dren because of the lengthy'interviewing required for the assessment of role knowledge. 95 on the incidental learning process. The technique demon- strated by the Occupations Test may lead to further develop- ment of similar tests, possibly dealing with the child's knowledge of unfamiliar topics to which television, as compared with other sources, is more likely to contribute. Such an effect study has been typically conducted by the 18 It seems that the present technique paper-pencil test. is most effective in such a comparative analysis. The problem of the ”homogenization" effect requires further investigation. In the present analysis, rankings of television contact occupations were used to speculate upon the homogenization effect in terms of the coefficient Of concordance. If television truly affects the child's conceptions of the world of work, it seems reasonable to assume that role knowledge of television contact occupa- tions may be influenced by TV content as well. Then, the homogeneity of variance may be computed within each set of the occupations to see that variances are homogeneous (Walker and Lev, 1953, p. 192). In connection with the homogenization effect, it has been frequently noted that televised portrayals of occupations are somewhat stereotyped (Himmelweit and others, 1958). In what ways can television contribute to alter 18See, for example: Yoda (1964) and Gerson (1966). 96 such stereotypes? Is it necessary to produce special programs on the world of work to counter present trends? Is it necessary to produce all programs, taking into account a balanced picture of the world of work? These are practical questions, and yet, they suggest need for systematic research. Finally and most important of all, having learned that television constitutes a potent learning source for children's occupational knowledge, the next step is to investigate the extent to which TV affects their occupa- tional interests and occupational choices in the future. Does the child's knowledge of the world of work affect his occupational interest or occupational choice? Through continued viewing of lawyers or medical doctors, will the child be motivated to become such professionals? These questions should be investigated in tracing the same chil- dren over a long period of time through the use of experi— mental and clinical methods. BIBLIOGRAPHY BIBLIOGRAPHY Bailyn, Lotte (1959), "Mass Media and Children: A Study of Exposure Habits and Cognitive Effects,” Psychological Monograph, Vol. 73, pp. 1-48. Bandura, Albert, Dorothea Ross, and Sheila A. Ross (1961), ”Transmission of Aggression through Imitation of Aggressive Models,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, Vol. 63, pp. 575-582. Bandura, Albert, Dorothea Ross, and Sheila A. Ross (1963), "Imitation of Film Mediated Aggressive Models," Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, Vol. 66, pp. 3-11} Bandura, Albert, and Richard H. 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APPENDIX A Status Rankings of 98 Occupations APPENDIX A Status Rankings of 98 Occupations* Rank Occupation Score 1 Prime Minister 94 2 President of the University of Tokyo 92 3 Chief Justice of the Supreme Court 90 4 Speaker of the House of Representatives 89 5 Minister of a government department 89 6 Nuclear physicist 87 7 Physicist 86 7 Medical director of a large hospital 86 9 Judge 86 10 Prefectural governor 83 11 University professor 83 12 President of a large company 82 13 Economist 82 14 Member of the House of Representatives 82 15 Cancer specialist 82 16 Botanist 78 17 Medical doctor 77 18 Eye specialist 71 19 Captain of an ocean liner 70 19 Aircraft pilot 70 21 Electronics engineer 69 22 Composer 68 23 Head coach of a professional baseball team 67 24 Civil engineer 67 25 Industrial engineer 67 26 Movie director 67 26 Section head of a large company 67 28 Newspaper serial writer 66 29 Section head of a national government office 65 30 President of a large labor union 64 31 TV announcer 64 *Adapted from Nishihira (1964, p. 121). 101 102 Status Rankings of 98 Occupations (Continued) Rank Occupations Score 32 Mining engineer 64 33 Section head of a company 63 34 Section head of a municipal government office 61 34 Elementary school teacher 61 36 Captain of a fishing boat 59 37 Priest of a Buddhist temple 57 38 Actor 56 39 Modern thermal generating station technician 54 40 Owner of a service station 52 41 National government office clerk 52 42 Policeman 52 43 Large company office clerk 51 44 Inn owner 51 45 Bullet train engineer 51 45 Thermal generating station mechanic 51 47 Chief carpenter 51 48 Office clerk 50 49 Steam train engineer 49 50 Airline clerk 49 51 Electric train engineer 49 52 Car salesman 48 52 Retail storekeeper 48 54 Tokyo station employee 48 54 Spinning company clerk 48 56 Bell captain 47 57 Whaleboat harpoonist 47 58 Cabinet maker 46 58 Barber shop owner 46 60 Barber 46 60 Self-defense Air Force member 46 62 Self-defense Army member 46 63 Auto mechanic 44 64 Train station employee 44 65 Carpenter 44 66 Independent farmer 43 67 Grocery storekeeper 43 67 Farm head 43 69 Automobile driver 42 70 Department store sales clerk 41 71 Heir to a farm 41 72 Mail truck driver 40 73 Spinner of a large company 39 74 Lathe turner 38 75 Store clerk 38 76 Train porter 38 103 Status Rankings of 98 Occupations (Continued) Rank Occupations Score 77 Spinner 37 78 Macaroni-maker 37 78 Insurance salesman 37 80 Garbage truck driver 37 81 Grocery store clerk 37 82 Printer 36 83 Bookstore clerk 36 83 Variety store clerk 36 85 Inn manager 36 86 Fisherman 36 87 Service station attendant 36 88 Fruit-vegetable store keeper 34 89 Baker 34 90 Noodle-maker 33 91 Gold miner 31 92 Farm laborer 30 93 Highway construction worker 28 94 Porter 28 95 Road construction worker 26 96 Door-to-door salesman 26 97 Goal miner 25 97 Charcoal burner 25 APPENDIX B Score Sheet for Occupational Role Knowledge and Grading Procedures 104 Ifi?%‘fi§% ? 2 bEEEESE (H i) L :QOOOO(fl-Fuabfli)@Atfitzkfiboifm. m'n m I 1. e wwz I _ 1 (Rtagztcasu)g:r.itmmrbittm. m irifimfifir L @ iveogmr [ 1 M tea (fiuat cmAuéot.%Lt:tfi50irmo m u w | ‘7;] @ mmz F7 I z COAE.£AKE$&TbArrmo 3. CUJAPio' fiflODtbblifllh'f Mi “Tb-o 4 :0Am.5:rfiw1mirmo s chu.&$tfbagu.Ehkfifiebwtfiwifmo 6 :QAR.cmfi$uo2§< o 1* 10¢rafi®m¥tbt m ateefi.awkswié.xsbuumb.x+o&t«b.se&ttwk9mtv. ht fitmorbeiua.QEOQOiboocettrmeMtl<. m ¥&®Lk I 115 mafiuwmpu -wewg can .wcfipcfimm mcfiocwp .ocmwm mcfizmfim .n ofiemp ow mcflcoumflq .0 >9 meagupaz .m weaseSpm .4 Hoogom um moaufl>flpum HwHSOAHhso mapxo ca wewmmw -co paw wcfixmfim .mcfi>©:um .m mHmoE mefl>wm .N mcflmmmfim .H NHHHonwnomemNHNHHHOHmwmom mcflco>m coochouw< wcflcsoz .moxmpmfle Oxma woe op paw xfifiswosmo pozomop exp 0» :Ogmfiq .coflpmhse exp mcfiumoflwcfl mafia w mcflzmpp sac mono: kn seem so ueomm maze: map :fl Hafim pew \ zmwhoumox paw so» umgz Hawomm moaohfluv onEom\onz uoEmz ”mmmau ”owmeo moaoa>apu< sfiflao mo eeooom ”Hoonom mo osz 116 mxwwuommv whonpo .wH Meadofiuhmm ca mcficpoz .NH #30 mefloo .OH mpOOEpzo maflgu e30 p50» wcfiom .mH whooecfl mefine :30 ~30» weflom .va mHOOEpso wawmaom .mH whooecw mewmaom .NH opflmuzo mcfixmad .HH oeflmcfl mcwxafim .OH mxoon so whommmmzm: mcfiwmom .m mxoon ufiEou mefiemmm .w NHHHonwnomemmHNHSOHmwsom wefleo>m coocpmpm< wcflcpoz Aposcflucouv mOMufi>fipo< xfiflwm we whouom APPENDIX D Mean Status-Knowledge Scores On Three Types of Contact Occupations by Grade, Sex, Social Class, and Intelligence APPENDIX D Table 1. Mean Status-Knowledge Scores On Three Types of Contact Occupations for Fourth and Sixth Grade Children. Personal General Grade N Contact Television Culture Mean 4 90 6.1 6.1 8.0 6 80 6.9 7.9 8.7 Standard 4 90 1.8 2.2 2.4 Deviation 6 80 2.7 2.5 2.5 Table 2. Mean Status-Knowledge Scores On Three Types of Contact Occupations for Male and Female Children. Personal General Sex N Contact Television Culture Mean Male 82 6.3 7.4 8.5 Female 88 6.7 6.5 8.2 Standard Male 82 2.2 2.5 2.5 Deviation Female 88 2.4 2.5 2.5 117 118 Table 3. Mean Status-Knowledge Scores On Three Types of Contact Occupations for Children of Three Social Class Levels. Social Class Personal General Level N Contact Television Culture Mean Upper- middle 39 6.4 7.4 8.4 Lower- middle 96 6.5 6.6 8.4 Lower 35 6.5 7.1 8.0 Standard Deviation Upper- middle 39 1.8 2.4 2.1 Lower— middle 96 2.5 2.7 2.6 Lower 35 2.5 2.1 2.6 Table 4. Mean Status-Knowledge Scores On Three Types of Contact Occupations for Children of Three Intelligence Levels. Intel— ligence Personal General Level N Contact Television Culture Mean High 49 6.8 7.4 8.3 Middle 64 6.3 6.9 8.3 Low 57 6.4 6.6 8.3 Standard Deviation High 49 2.4 2.8 2.2 Middle 64 1.9 2.4 2.4 Low 57 2.5 2.4 2.8 .II““I I|L 'lll ._ "IIIIIITIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII