| Summary: | This study provides an alternative conceptual and operational approach for examining television viewing behaviors and effects. Traditional measures of television viewing, "general TV viewing" and "individual program viewing" are criticized. Viewing pattern analysis, in contrast, is asserted to be more meaningful in detecting effects of TV exposure. Viewing patterns consist of proportions of viewing time for each program type. This study proposes that different viewing patterns will have different effects. === A test of pattern analysis is conducted in the context of the cultivation theory. First, three distinctive viewing patterns are found among adolescents: masculine, neutral, and feminine viewing patterns. Most of the masculine pattern members are boys and an overwhelming percentage of the feminine pattern members are girls. Second, viewing pattern effects are found to be much greater when compared with traditional measures of general TV viewing. But, when age, education, gender, income, and race are controlled, most of viewing pattern effects disappear. === Pattern analytic methods offer useful information about TV viewing behaviors which could not be obtained by the previous analytic methods. Viewing patterns are specifically found to have heuristic value as predictor variables in cultivation theory. Advanced modeling techniques are needed to further identify the hidden structures among viewing patterns, demographic variables, and cultivation variables. === Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 49-09, Section: A, page: 2436. === Major Professor: Gary Heald. === Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1988.
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