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Posted 11-22-99
Inadequate parental monitoring and exposure to real-life violence contribute far more to violent behavior in children than does watching televised violence, according to a Case Western Reserve University study published in the October issue of Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
"Television viewing is significant, but it isn't nearly as powerful as these other factors in predicting children's violent behavior," said principal investigator Mark Singer, a professor at the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences.
Singer's study is based upon a survey of 2,245 youngsters ages 7-15 at 11 Northeast Ohio schools -- four in a small city, four in a rural district, and three in Cleveland.
They were about evenly divided between boys and girls, with 57 percent white, 33 percent African-American, and 5 percent Hispanic.
The study documented the children's own violent behaviors and their exposure to violence as either witnesses or victims at home, school, and in the neighborhood. It assessed the youngsters' television viewing habits based on hours watched per day and favorite programs.
Researchers also measured parental monitoring based on seven criteria, such as whether the parents set and enforce curfews, whether they know who their child's friends are, and if they know their child's whereabouts when not in school.
When researchers compared the most highly monitored 25 percent of children with the least monitored 25 percent, they found that "children in the low-monitor group reported significantly higher levels of violent behavior than did those children in the high-monitor group."
The study asked the children about violence they had experienced or witnessed personally, including threats of violence; slapping, hitting, or punching; beatings; knife attacks; and shootings. It also asked about the children's own aggressive behaviors in the past year.
"Rates of witnessing violence were high for both genders," the study reports, although higher percentages of children at central city schools witnessed more serious forms of violence such as knife attacks or stabbing and shootings.
For example, 44 percent of boys and 37 percent of girls in the central city had seen someone shot or shot at, compared to 16 and 11 percent, respectively, of small-city boys and girls, and 13 and 8 percent of rural boys and girls.
"Violence exposure variables were powerful contributors to the prediction of violent behavior," notes the Pediatrics report. The types of violence exposure that contributed most highly to violent actions included shooting or knife attacks and being a witness or victim of home violence.
"Parental monitoring and recent violence exposure were the most robust predictors of violent behavior," the researchers found. "Although the influences of television viewing were statistically significant, the contribution of television viewing to explaining violent behavior was relatively small."
Singer and his co-authors believe these findings offer violence-prevention strategies for parents, pediatricians, and other professionals who work with children and families. Parents should know who their children's friends are, know where their children spend their free time, expect children to be home at a certain time, and establish consequences for when rules and curfews are broken, he said. Pediatricians and other professionals can emphasize the importance of these parenting techniques with the families they work with, he added.
In addition, pediatricians who treat children with violence-related injuries, especially in emergency rooms, should screen routinely for violence exposure to identify children who are at high risk of exhibiting violent behaviors, the report recommends, and such children should be referred to appropriate intervention programs.
Singer's co-authors include David B. Miller, an associate professor at MSASS, and former CWRU professor Daniel J. Flannery, now associate professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Kent State University.
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