Children's Television-Viewing Frequency: Individual Differences and Demographic Correlates

Previous research has indicated that a number of demographic factors, particularly ethnicity and socioeconomic status, are significantly related to children's use of television. Yet these factors are often not integrated into research relating television-viewing behavior to psychological and social variables of interest. In the present study of three samples of upper elementary school students, ethnicity was found to be a strong determinant of the amount of television viewed. Black children viewed nearly twice as much television as White children, independent of parents' level of education, which itself was inversely related to viewing frequency. No clear relationship was found between viewing frequency and sex, birth order, or number of siblings. Among White subjects, however, there were modest indications that children who live with one natural parent and one stepparent may watch more television than children from households with either two natural parents or one natural parent only. The correlations of individuals' viewing frequency over 1- and 2-year time periods, both among the total sampled and among selected demographic subgroups, were highly significant. Thus not only demographic differences in viewing frequency were found to be stable over time. For the individual child, viewing frequency was a stable behavioral trait, regardless of the fluctuations of the networks' offerings from year to year. Methodological implications of these results for research on television and other aspects of human behavior are discussed.