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TELEVISION ADDICTION: A SURVEY
Abstract
Despite assumptions about television addiction in the literature on television viewing, there have been no systematic attempts to document it. The present study was the first. A review of theories on addiction processes concluded that the theoretical consensus on addiction permits the possibility of the existence of this phenomenon in TV viewing. Also, the theories point to the effective domain as an area in which to expect differences between TV addicts and normal viewers. Both the scientific and popular conceptions of TV addiction were also reviewed. A content analysis of the popular literature provided specific guidelines for the operational definition of TV addiction used in this study. A television viewing questionnaire which included a self-rating scale of items derived from descriptions of addicts in the popular literature, as well as many other measures, was administered by mail to a random sample of residents of Springfield, Massachusetts, in the spring of 1982. The response rate was 65%. The results of confirmatory factor analyses failed to support the hypothesis that TV addiction exists as it is described in the popular literature. None of the respondents scored at or above the criterion for the existence of the addiction factor in their responses. An alternative two-factor model was better able to account for the item covariences. Descriptive statistics on the addiction scale items indicate that most respondents feel that TV-addictive behavior is completely uncharacteristic of them. Yet, 65% agreed that "Television is addictive" and eleven respondents called themselves addicts. It was observed that the average number of hours reported in viewing time for this group was over double that of the entire sample. Future analyses of this data will test alternative conceptions of television addiction. An attempt was made to account for the popularity of the notion of television as a "plug-in drug" in terms of (1) our sparse scientific knowledge about the nature of the viewing experience, and (2) an abiding fear or ambivalence in American culture about technology and its effects.
Subject Area
Psychology|Experiments
Recommended Citation
SMITH, ROBIN NELL, "TELEVISION ADDICTION: A SURVEY" (1983). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI8310337.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI8310337