Children who see cooperative role models, (TV shows like "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" or "Barney") behave in more cooperative ways.
Children's environment affects their behavior.
1. What type of study is each?
-- case study/descriptive, -- correlational study,
-- experiment, -- naturalistic observation/field
1a. Does this study change (manipulate) one variable?
1b. Does this study measure a few variables (2-5), some variables (around
10), or many variables (too many to count)?
1c. Does this study already have all of the variables they are going to look
at defined before they start gathering their data?
2. What are the variables in each study? List each as
2a. One variable is "cooperative TV programs" watched. How is this measured differently in each study?
Think about how the information in each study is different.
Researcher go to playgrounds in different elementary schools and study whichever kids are on the playground those days. They compare all same age of children. They notice what types of games kids play, how they are started, cooperative behavior (e.g. giving ball to next kid, setting up order or lineup for turns) and uncooperative beahvior (pushing, shoving, taking extra turns). They note how many teachers are present, how much and what types of interaction teachers have with kids. They look at the size of playground, types of equipment, and how they are arranged (e.g. many small activity areas to one big toy). They compare to see which types of playground settings promote most cooperative behavior.
The researchers advertise for families with 2 year old children to participate. They divide the children into three groups and show one group 3 hours of "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" as a "cooperative TV program", where characters do share. They show the second group 3 hours of "Roadrunner" as an "uncooperative TV program", where characters don't share. They don't show any TV to the third group. Then they have all the kids play together and record the number of cooperative behaviors each kid shows, such as giving a toy to another kid, not yelling for the teacher when your toy is taken, starting games with other kids, playing the role the other kid wants you to play, etc. There were approximately 30 kids in each group. How do you think they are assigned to groups?
Researchers advertise for 5 families with 2 year old children to participate. They ask the families how often children watch different kinds of TV shows. They record when the kids watched shows, which ones, whether those episodes showed much cooperative or uncooperative behavior, and how much attention kids paid to shows. They observed the children's behavior with other kids at the playground, with classmates at school. They observed how parents and kids interacted. In each case they decided how cooperative and uncooperative the behavior was. They noticed things about the neighborhood that might lead to more or less cooperative behavior, like how other kids in the neighborhood acted, how competitive sports teams and local bands were.
The researchers called people with 2 year old children on the phone and asked them to respond to a list of questions about their children's behavior. They asked how many hours of "Mr. Rogers" and "Barney" the kid watched, how often the child shared their toys with others, how many kids there were in the family. (See below.) Because the survey took a few minutes to complete, they talk to 500 families randomly sampled form the whole state of Washington.
Questions for phone survey:
1. Would you describe your child's behavior on the following scale
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
very |
both |
very |
2. Does s/he share toys and more like that
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
| never | sometimes | often | always |
OTHER QUESTIONS
7. Does child have a best friend?
and a couple more like that.
__ yes __ no
Matching: For Study #2 Match
(Use one term more than once)
| 1 control group | a amount of cooperative behavior |
| 2 extraneous/confounding variable | b cooperative tv shows kids how to act friendly, and shows kids being rewarded for good behavior, providing a model and indrect operant conditioning. |
| 3 dependent variable/concept | c kids who didn't watch any TV in experiment (3rd group) |
| 4 experimental group | d kids who watch Mr. Rogers will be more cooperative |
| 5 control variable | e kids who watched Mr. Rogers (1st group) |
| 6 operational definition of a variable | f media productions incorporation of cooperative behavior or not |
| 7 independent variable/concept | g Mr. Roger's neighborhood |
| 8 hypothesis | h starting games with other kids |
| 9 theory | i the age of the kids |
| j what part of country kids came from |
"Good evening, sir/madam, may I have a moment of your time to complete a brief survey."
KID BEHAVIOR QUESTIONS
1. Would you describe your child's behavior on the following scale
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
very both very
uncooperative cooperative
2. Does s/he share toys
1 2 3 4
never sometimes often always
3. Does s/he share candy
1 2 3 4
never sometimes often always
4. When given a treat, does s/he ask, "Can Janie have one too?"
1 2 3 4
never sometimes often always
5. How many hours of tv does s/he watch a week?
5a. How many hours are violent tv?
OTHER QUESTIONS
6. How many children are there in the family?
__ 1 __ 2 __ 3 - 5 __ 6 or more
7. Does child have a best friend?
__ yes __ no
8. Does child go to day care?
__ yes __ no