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Gepubliceerd in: Journal of Youth and Adolescence 2/2017

12-09-2016 | Empirical Research

The Impact of Degree of Exposure to Violent Video Games, Family Background, and Other Factors on Youth Violence

Auteurs: Whitney DeCamp, Christopher J. Ferguson

Gepubliceerd in: Journal of Youth and Adolescence | Uitgave 2/2017

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Abstract

Despite decades of study, no scholarly consensus has emerged regarding whether violent video games contribute to youth violence. Some skeptics contend that small correlations between violent game play and violence-related outcomes may be due to other factors, which include a wide range of possible effects from gender, mental health, and social influences. The current study examines this issue with a large and diverse (49 % white, 21 % black, 18 % Hispanic, and 12 % other or mixed race/ethnicity; 51 % female) sample of youth in eighth (n = 5133) and eleventh grade (n = 3886). Models examining video game play and violence-related outcomes without any controls tended to return small, but statistically significant relationships between violent games and violence-related outcomes. However, once other predictors were included in the models and once propensity scores were used to control for an underlying propensity for choosing or being allowed to play violent video games, these relationships vanished, became inverse, or were reduced to trivial effect sizes. These results offer further support to the conclusion that video game violence is not a meaningful predictor of youth violence and, instead, support the conclusion that family and social variables are more influential factors.
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1
Senator Clinton presented this statement as a quote of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) via a report entitled Media Exposure Feeding Children’s Violent Acts. The quote, however, actually appeared in news coverage (O’Keefe 2002), but did not appear in the original article by the AAP. To be sure, the article being reported on did make the claim that the effect was stronger than smoke on lung cancer (American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Public Education 2001), which reached that conclusion using evidence without citations from a prepared statement given during testimony before congress (Committee on Commerce Science and Transportation 2000).
 
2
Although the questionnaire included several deviance-related questions, these two were the only ones that directly measured violence against another person.
 
3
Only 12% of eighth grade students and 10% of eleventh grade students selected the highest category. Therefore, it appears that only minimal information about a greater range was lost given the “or more” nature of this response category.
 
4
The reason this kitchen sink approach is often used is because the utility from propensity scores comes from having as accurate a score as possible through a model capable of predicting the variable of interest. The number of indicators, because they are reduced down via regression weights into a single score, is largely irrelevant other than that more variables will (usually) produce a more accurate score. In other words, a variable does not require a clear theoretical, direct, or non-spurious connection in order to be useful in creating a propensity score and regression assumptions are of reduced concern (Wooldridge 2010). In respect to maintaining time-order, however, the present study avoids using variables that could be outcomes from playing violent games.
 
5
Prior research has found substantial gender differences (e.g., DeCamp 2015; Gunter and Daly 2012), so separate models for males and females are necessary. Although there is no similar evidence of a difference between grades, we err on the side of caution in the absence of evidence to the contrary and do not merge the distinct grade samples.
 
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Metagegevens
Titel
The Impact of Degree of Exposure to Violent Video Games, Family Background, and Other Factors on Youth Violence
Auteurs
Whitney DeCamp
Christopher J. Ferguson
Publicatiedatum
12-09-2016
Uitgeverij
Springer US
Gepubliceerd in
Journal of Youth and Adolescence / Uitgave 2/2017
Print ISSN: 0047-2891
Elektronisch ISSN: 1573-6601
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-016-0561-8

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