Re: Vioence, drugs and video games
Let me first quote from an excellent review of a great number of studies until 2003 (Savage, 2003)
...Of these, seven summary findings report a positive effect but three of those are for girls only. Four summary findings report a negative effect (more media violence, less violent behavior). Nine findings are null and three reflect an interaction such that viewing violence had a positive effect on those already high in trait aggression. On the balance, for boys, there appears to be no more evidence for a positive effect than there is for a negative effect of media violence on violent behavior.
Although it could be the case that most of the studies missed the effect due to methodological limitations, it is not appropriate nor is it common practice to conclude that the effect must have been missed in those studies.
What is common practice is to evaluate the methodology of studies that report significant findings, see if there are rival hypotheses, and temper our conclusions to the extent that there are. Of the ‘‘high’’ and ‘‘medium’’ relevance studies reporting positive findings we find a time lag that was not prespecified, a matched design with potential for spuriousness, and a lack of control for prior aggressiveness—all very significant problems that without further study mitigate against our confidence in these findings. Of course this conclusion would be different if we accept the interpretations of the prospective cross-national studies provided by their authors, which have not been accepted at face value in this review.
Schramm, Lyle, and Parker (1961), in the very first lines of one of the first full-length studies of television and North American children, wrote that ‘‘No informed person can say simply that television is bad or that it is good for children. For some children, under some conditions, some television is harmful. For other children, under the same conditions, or for the same children under other conditions, it may be beneficial. For most children, under most conditions, most television is probably neither particularly harmful nor particularly beneficial’’. This early conclusion probably holds today. Unfortunately for the serious scholar, most published reviews and discussions of this topic frequently cite conclusions of authors without addressing the inadequacies of the research that produced them.
Here you can see the problems of those studies:
Last edited by Garbarsardar; May 01, 2006 at 02:32 PM.
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Originally Posted by God
