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Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014
1-1-1983
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Robin Nell Smith
University of Massachusetts Amherst
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Smith, Robin Nell, "Television addiction: a survey." (1983). Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014.
1725.
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TELEVISION ADDICTION: A SURVEY
A Dissertation Presented
By
ROBIN NELL SMITH
Submitted to the Graduate School of the
University of Massachusetts in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
February 1983
Psychology
Robin Nell Smith 1982
All Rights Reserved
This material is based upon work supported by the National
Science Foundation under Grant No. BNS-8116876.
i i
TELEVISION ADDICTION: A SURVEY
A Dissertation Presented
By
ROBIN NELL SMITH
Approved as to style and content by:
teeter Rossi Member
,
Bonnie Strickland, Department Head
Psychology
iii
Dedicated to my parents,
Jack Edward Smith, Jr.
and
Patricia Ann Smith
iv
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would first like to express my gratitude to my advisor, Dan
Anderson. In all aspects of this endeavor, from the earliest ideas to
the final revisions, he was consistently helpful and supportive.
I
have learned a great deal from Dan, and I expect that his example of
personal and intellectual integrity will continue to inspire me for
years to come.
I also want to thank my other committee members for their
generosity in sharing time and help toward this project. Peter Rossi
and several colleagues, especially Eleanor Weber, shared their exper-
tise in conducting survey research. Their careful and extensive review
of the questionnaire was especially appreciated. Arnie Well provided
guidance in reporting the factor analyses and the binomial analysis.
His willingness to provide this guidance when time pressures were great
is especially appreciated. Ed Tronick also was cooperative in provid-
ing important comments and advice on the paper when time was pressing.
Early conversations with Jennings Bryant, who was a committee
member before his move to the University of Evansville, were valuable
in clarifying my thinking about this phenomenon. Jay Demerath en-
couraged me to apply for a dissertation grant even though the funding
possibilities looked uncertain.
appreciate the generosity of the following people in sharing
I
their thoughts with me about this project at various phases in its com-
v
pletion: Alison Alexander, Peter Crown, Seymour Epstein, Howard
Gadlin, Marion MacDonald, and Bonnie Strickland.
I am very grateful to the National Science Foundation for the
dissertation grant which enabled me to carry out this project. A small
grant from Sigma Xi, the scientific research honor society, was also
very helpful and is appreciated.
These funds enabled me to hire Patricia Collins as my research
assistant. Her work was excellent and she made contributions to
many phases of the project. In addition, Eric Pierce provided creative
solutions to the problems posed by having large data sets in small com-
puter accounts. His programming and documentation procedures made the
mailing process go smoothly. Mike Sutherland and Jim Weigang provided
the custom-made confirmatory factor analysis program which was so es-
sential to the testing of the hypothesis. Gary Dibble did a very pro-
fessional translation of the questionnaire into Spanish.
There were several people who, in the course of their work,
went "beyond the call of duty" to ensure that this project was properly
completed. They include Betsy Adams, Cindy Burger, Richard Clarity,
Ron Halko, and Rob Hazen. Susan Reed provided good humor and excellent
skill in typing during the last phase of the project.
Finally, I want to thank my friends in Dan Anderson's lab for
their consistent help and good company through the two years that this
project was my major concern.
vi
ABSTRACT
Television Addiction: A Survey
February, 1983
Robin Nell Smith, B. A. , Lake Erie College
M.A., New York University, Ph.D., University of Massachusetts
Directed by: Professor Daniel R. Anderson
Despite assumptions about television addiction in the litera-
ture 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 exis-
tence of this phenomenon in TV viewing. Also, the theories point to
the affective 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 pro-
vided specific guidelines for the operational definition of TV addic-
tion used in this study.
A television viewing questionnaire which included a self-
rating scale of items derived from descriptions of addicts in the popu-
lar 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%.
vii
The results of confirmatory factor analyses failed to support
the hypothesis that TV addiction exists as it is described in the popu-
lar literature. None of the respondents scored at or above the cri-
terion for the existence of the addiction factor in their responses.
An alternative two-factor model was better able to account for the
item covariances. Descriptive statistics on the addiction scale items
indicate that most respondents feel that TV-addictive behavior is com-
pletely 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 these data will test alternative conceptions of television addic-
tion.
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 abid-
ing fear or ambivalence in American culture about technology and its
effects.
VI 1 1
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