Adolescents’ television viewing: Its impact on quality of sibling and peer relationship

Pages: 333-341
Shilpi Nanglu (Defense Institute of Psychological Research, DRDO, New Delhi)

Objective-The study aimed at seeing the linkage between Indian adolescents’ television viewing and their quality of sibling and peer relationship. The study sample consisted of male and female children (N=400) aged between 12 to 15 years with mean age of 13 years. It was hypothesized that heavy viewers of TV (watching > 3 hours of television) would be significantly higher on the conflict, rivalry, perceived relative status dimensions of sibling relationship than the light viewers. Adolescents’ higher exposure to informative programs will be positively related to warmth dimensions of sibling relationship. Heavy viewers of television will be significantly higher on conflict dimension of peer relationship than the light viewers of television. Method-Television viewing was measured by Television viewing patterns questionnaire by Nanglu and Banth (2006) in terms of the number of hours spent viewing television and the type of content viewed by the individual, i.e., (entertainment, informative, sports, & violent programs). Sibling relationship was measured by (Furmon et al., 1985) and peer relationship was measured by Friendship qualities scale (Bukowski et al., 1994). The respondents were divided in to heavy (> 3 hours /day) and light viewers (< 3 hours /day) on the basis of the reported daily television viewing time. The data was analyzed by t-ratio and regression analysis. Results- Television-viewing pattern is not affecting the sibling relationship on the dimensions of warmth, conflict, perceived relative status and rivalry. Light viewers are significantly high on security dimension of peer relationship as compared to heavy viewers. Regression analysis indicated total 12.2 % of variance is predicted in the sibling relationship and peer relationship by the viewing of the informative, sports programs and horror/violent programs. Conclusion-This is indicative of the fact that the extent of television viewing and content of television viewing influences the quality of adolescents' sibling and peer relationship.