The influence of television upon adolescent perceptions toward police and crime

Abstract

This study was an attempt to discover if a relationship exists between frequency of television viewing and adolescent perceptions of police and crime. The apparent unrealistic portrayal of police on television have led researchers to examine the specific content of police and crime dramas to determine if these unrealistic portrayals have an effect on perceptions and attitudes. The basic theoretical position surrounding the study focuses in on the theory of "social reality," a theory which states that since it is too difficult to come into experience with everything in our environment, one's definition of a situation is derived from communication. Five hypotheses were addressed in this study. Each hypothesis was concerned with an issue surrounding the police. The five issues under consideration were : police role, police adherence to regulations imposed upon them, crime control/due process issue, police violence and danger potential, and police efficacy in dealing with crime. The sample employed in the study consisted of adolescent female and male students from Rutherford B. Hayes Middle School in Youngstown, Ohio. The variables in the study were measured by a questionnaire which was designed to obtain attitudes and perceptions concerning the police, as well as questions directed toward television viewing habits and demographic data. The responses were divided into three separate groups based upon the frequency of police shows and total shows viewed on a regular basis. The three groups consisted of high frequency, low frequency, and medium frequency viewers. The relationship between the primary independent variables to the dependent variables were determined by the one-way analyses of variance procedure. The relationship between the secondary independent variables to the independent variables were determined by the two-way analyses of variance procedures. Some of the more interesting results of the study demonstrated that law enforcement role was chosen as the most important role for police, and that females appeared to be more oriented to the law enforcement role than males. The respondents as a whole felt that the police occupation is potentially very dangerous. The primary results of the study do not support the major premise of the research, that a relationship exists between frequency of television viewing and perceptions toward police and crime. However, it was concluded that television as a source of information concerning police activity, regardless of the number of shows viewed, appears to be an important factor in attitude formation toward police and crime.