active and passive coviewing

7/25/2019 active and passive coviewing

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Reconceptualizing Coviewing 1

Reconceptualizing Coviewing As a Kind of Mediation

More and more studies have adopted the three-dimensional conceptualization of

mediation as their framework for studying the effects of mediation on children and the various

predictors of parental mediation (Austin, Bolls, Fujioka, & Engelbertson, 1999; Nathanson,

1999). Under this framework are active mediation, restrictive mediation, and coviewing. Active

mediation refers to talking to children about television, restrictive mediation refers to setting

rules on childrens television consumption, and coviewing refers to the simple act of watching

television with children. While the three dimensions are well accepted, not all are well

conceptualized. This is especially true for coviewing. In fact, out of the three mediation

dimensions, it was reviewed to have the least clarity in the mediation literature (p.123,

Nathanson, 2001a).

Classic television-use studies are one of the first to examine coviewing (Himmelweit et

al., 1958, Schramm et al., 1961). Studies on program choice have also explored coviewing along

with viewing pattern (McDonald, 1986, St. Peters, Fitch, Huston, Wright, & Eakins, 1991).

However, it wasnt until the emergence of mediation study has coviewing been studied as a

possible means to intervene televisions effect on children. Unfortunately, rather than

conceptualizing coviewings unique characteristics as a form of mediation, studies simply adopt

former coviewing conceptualization and measured it the same way television-use and program

choice studies have measured it. While conceptualizing coviewing as a form of mediation

suggests the instrumental use of coviewing to act upon televisions effect on children, its

operationalization was never consistent with its conceptualization.

Among mediation studies, coviewing has been tacitly conceptualized as the simple act of

watching television with children. For most studies, only the behavioral aspect of coviewing was


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tapped (i.e. I watch television with my child) (Austin et al., 1999; Dorr, Kovaric, Doubleday,

1989; Messaris & Kerr, 1982). Unlike active and restrictive mediations operationalization,

which reflects overt activities done intentionally by parents, studies found coviewings

operationalization to reflect subtle mediation activity done unintentionally by parents (Fujioka &

Austin, 2003). How is coviewing a kind of mediation if parents arent even aware of their

mediating behavior? As a matter of fact, several studies have argued that coviewing cannot

develop critical viewing like other mediation forms do (Austin et al., 1999) and are beginning to

address coviewing separately from mediation (Fujioka & Austin, 2003). Is it true that coviewing

only exist as an unintentional viewing behavior rather than an intentional mediation act? Perhaps

the intentional aspect of coviewing does exist, but with the simple conceptualization of

coviewing, studies have overlooked this possibility. Therefore, it will be argued in this paper that

coviewing should not only be measured by asking the frequency of parent-childs shared

television viewing experience. Instead, motivational aspect should be considered.

We believe that it is due to the simplified conceptualization of coviewing that many

contradicting findings and vague interpretations of coviewing phenomena exist. Research has

reported contradicting findings concerning the frequency of coviewing among different age

groups (Dorr et al., 1989;van der Voort, Nikken, & Van Lil, 1992). Research also shown that

coviewing has little or no significant relationship with parental concern about television (Austin

et al., 1999) and child outcomes such as aggression (Nathanson, 1999), perception of TV realism

(Dorr et al., 1989), perceived representativeness of TV characters, and identification with TV

characters (Messaris & Kerr, 1982). These confusions and unintuitive findings again suggest the

possible poor conceptualization and measurement of coviewing that studies have taken for


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granted over the years. They also call into question whether coviewing is truly a form of

mediation.

As a result, the purpose of this study is to conceptually redefine coviewing. Specifically,

we seek to introduce a motivational aspect into the concept of coviewing and operationally

reconstruct a new and improved coviewing scale to obtain a more precise measure of coviewing.

While we believe a more accurate measurement of coviewing, as a form of mediation,

comes from reconceptualizing it from a motivational perspective, past research also suggests

specifying program content as an operational approach to increase measurement accuracy.

Nathanson (2001a) pointed out that conceptual oversight of television content among common

mediation research has often caused measurement problems that often times yielded less accurate

data. Mediation research tends to use nonspecific mediation measures that force parents to

generalize their mediation behaviors across all types of television content. This includes

coviewing. Consequently, in order to get the most accurate data, this study will also take

program content into consideration by incorporating content-specific items into our measurement

scales.

Passive Coviewing (Social Coviewing)

Study results show that coviewing occurs more frequently with programs that interest the

parent (Dorr et al., 1989). Studies also found evidence that coviewing associates more with

viewing time than with critical viewing (Atkin, Greenberg, & Baldwin, 1991; Desmond, Singer,

Singer, Calam, & Colimore, 1985). Also, as illustrated earlier, a handful of studies are not

finding significance relationships between coviewing and child outcomes. Given this, scholars

reside with the explanation that coviewing is a result of parent-childs affinity for the television

program rather parents intention to socialize children or protect children from harmful content


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(Austin et al., 1999; Dorr et al., 1989; Nathanson, 2001b). More specifically, studies address

coviewing as a passive behavior for entertainment and fun, rather than an active behavior that

uses television to reach certain childrearing goals (Atkin et al., 1991, p.42).

Aside from study results that suggest passive coviewing, the rationale used to explain

unfocused guidance done in the earlier mediation studies resonates with this concept as well

(Bybee et al., 1982). The idea of unfocused guidance was first introduced as a kind of

mediation that requires the least psychological effort (Bybee et al., 1982). In other words, it

refers to unintentional mediation behaviors that do not require a lot of mental effort. According

to Weaver & Barbour (1992), unfocused mediation has the characteristics of being unintentional

and non-specific. In their work, Bybee et al. (1982) measured coviewing behavior as a part of the

unfocused guidance scale. Therefore, again, coviewing has shown to be treated as a passive and

unintentional behavior.

Although decades of mediation research has tacitly assumed coviewing to be passive, this

assumption was only inferred from data gathered using scales that tap the behavioral aspect of

coviewing instead of the motivational aspect of coviewing. However, recent studies are

beginning to incorporate the motivational aspect into their coviewing measures. Attempting to

develop a scale assessing mediation, Valkenburg, Krcmar, Peeters, and Marseille (1999) asked

parents about their coviewing behavior with an affective and entertaining theme which resulted

in a new coviewing scale called social coviewing. The social coviewing scale directly

incorporates the motivational aspect into the existing behavioral scale (e.g. how often do you

watch television with your child, because you both like the program; how often do you watch

together for the fun). Valkenburg et al. (1999) successfully measured the passive aspect of

coviewing and provided more direct evidence for past researchs assumption that coviewing can


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be coincidental. While the motivational aspect was acknowledged in the scale, the social

coviewing scale still adheres with the assumption that parents coview passively. The fact that

their data showed no relationship between social coviewing and parental concerns confirms

social coviewing to be passive and ritualistic in nature.

Intentional Coviewing

Given the empirical evidence of the passive coviewing, we take on the role to question

the existence of another motivational aspect of coviewing---intentional coviewing. While passive

coviewing suggests the idea that parents coview with little thought of their children in mind,

intentional coviewing suggests a conscious concern for medias effect on their children. In other

words, parents can coview for their own interest (i.e. passive coviewing) or for the benefit of

their children (i.e. intentional coviewing). That is, passive coviewing implies a more parent-

oriented purpose and intentional coviewing implies a more child-oriented purpose.

Parenting guidelines that encourage parents to watch television with conscious purposes

such as monitoring and mediating seem to support the idea of intentional coviewing (National

Institute of Media and the Family, 2002). Furthermore, studies have mentioned the possibility for

parents to coview because they want their children to learn from the TV (Dorr et al., 1989) or

because they want to know what their children are watching (Kytomaki, n.d.). All these sounds

like legitimate coviewing reasons that fall outside of passive coviewing; however, no research

has been done to verify this claim.

Aside from published parenting guidelines, studies on television and families also suggest

the existence of intentional coviewing. In a study on young children and parents coviewing

content, St. Peters et al. (1991) inferred that coviewing may be the result of parental needs to

supervise instead of parental efforts to share the childs program interests. Again, parental


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coviewing can be intentional in nature in which parents coviewing with their childs benefit in

mind. This further supports our two-dimensional coviewing.

Besides the recently developed social coviewing concept that addressed the unintentional

aspect of coviewing, there also exist traces of intentional coviewing among mediation research.

In replicating Bybee et al.s (1982) mediation study on a Dutch population, van der Voort,

Nikken, and Van Lils (1992) created two intentional coviewing items to specifically tap parents

conscious coviewing motivation (i.e. coviewing for the benefit of the child; coviewing at the

request of the child). These two items were included in the unfocused mediation measure and

found to yield the highest loading on the factor. Along with the two added items were general

coviewing items.Although the importance of measuring the intentional aspect of coviewing was

not delineated, van der Voort et al.s (1992) study results suggest that parents coviewing

behavior are not only due to coincidence or shared interest, but also by intentional conscious

desires.

However, van der Voort et al.s (1992) study contains one conceptual ambiguity. How

can items that reflect intentional coviewing be grouped under unfocused mediation that suggests

unintentional behaviors? One possible explanation is that van der Voort and colleagues simply

adopted Bybee et al.s (1982) label but wasnt actually measuring the same concept. This again

demonstrates the confusing conceptualization and labeling of coviewing among past research.

From the above discussion of passive and intentional coviewing, it is evident that studies

are acknowledging the necessity of incorporating a motivational conceptualization into

coviewing measurements and have found empirical evidence for both types of coviewing

(Valkenburg et al., 1999; van der Voort et al. 1992). Nonetheless, no studies to date have

examined them together and explained the mechanism behind them.


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While it is important to distinguish intentional coviewing from passive coviewing, it is

possible that their occurrences are contingent upon other variables. Although no research to date

suggest the direction of how content may affect the structure of different types of coviewing,

researchers are increasingly aware of the effect program content may have on mediation

behaviors (Nathanson, 2001a). Bandura (2001) also stated that televised influence is best defined

in terms of the content people watch rather than the sheer amount of television viewing. Since

coviewing as a form of mediation is a behavior to affect television influence, it seems logical to

measure coviewing in consideration of content differences. Furthermore, in their research using

eight program categories

1

, St. Peters et al. (1991) concluded that program categories are

important determinants of coviewing (p.1421). They found that parents coview primarily adult-

audience programs with their children, while child-audience programs receive relatively

infrequent coviewing. This finding supports contents potential effect on coviewing behavior.

However, we know very little about how content interplays with passive coviewing and

intentional coviewing. For example, parents might passively coview prime time TV shows with

their children because of their own interest in the program, but intentionally coview educational

TV shows for the benefit of their children. Perhaps different program content dictates coviewing

types. Consequently, this study asks the following research questions.

RQ1: Which of the two coviewing dimensions do parents most frequently use?

RQ2: How does the amount of coviewing, passive and intentional, vary with television

content?

1Program categories are: 1) child informative, 2) child entertainment, 3) news and informative, 4) sports, 5)

comedy, 6) drama, 7) action-adventure, and 8) variety-game.


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Attitudinal Predictors of Passive Coviewing and Intentional Coviewing

As mentioned earlier, a simplified conceptualization of coviewing has brought forth

inconsistent findings. After exploring the conceptualization of coviewing, the next issue is to

clarify the existing confusion with our reconceptualized coviewing dimensions. Parental attitudes

about television, such as concerns over certain content, have been used to better understand the

use of different mediation styles (Austin et al., 1999; Bybee et al., 1982; Nathanson, 2001b).

However, results regarding the relationship between coviewing and parental attitudes have been

unclear.

For example, some studies found no relationship between attitudes toward television and

coviewing, some said coviewing occurs more with positive parental attitudes, yet some said

show that coviewing occurs more with negative parental attitude. In terms of positive attitudes,

McDonald (1986) argued that parents coview most often when they share the same program

choice. Dorr et al. (1989) also supported this argument and further found support from their data

that coviewing occurred more frequent among parents who are relatively more positive toward

television. However, also with the use of a single-item coviewing measure, other studies (Austin

et al.; 1999) did not find a significant relationship between positive attitudes and coviewing.

Using perceived antisocial and prosocial effects of television as indicators of negative and

positive attitudes toward television, Bybee et al. (1982) also did not find a significant

relationship between coviewing2

and parents attitudes. As for negative attitudes, among parents

of 5-12 year-olds, Valkenburg et al. (1999) found no associations between social coviewing and

parental concerns; but among parents of 1-5 year-olds, Warren (2003) found a significant

relationship between negative attitudes and social coviewing. That is, the more concerned the

parents are, the more they coview. Similarly, using unfocused guidance (coviewing), van der

2Bybee et al. (1982) used unfocused guidance that included coviewing measures.


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Voort et al. (1992) found it to related positively with parental concern. Obviously, studies on

coviewing and parents attitudes towards television come to different conclusions.

Besides using a single-item coviewing measure or a social coviewing scale, studies that

used content-specific coviewing measures found significant relationships between coviewing and

parental attitudes such as affinity to television content, belief that television has no harm, and

belief that television can affect childrens social learning (Nathanson, 2001b). More favorable

attitudes towards television seem to suggest more coviewing. Indeed, Nathanson (2001b) has

demonstrated the importance of specifying content to help parents estimate their responses and to

yield more accurate results. Studies using a social coviewing scale also confirmed the empirical

existence of passive coviewing with motivational measures of coviewing. There is no doubt that

different studies have found different ways to advance coviewing measures; yet no studies tried

to integrate these innovations and none to date have clarified the question of whether positive

attitudes or negative attitudes toward television bring more coviewing. As a result, we believe

specifying content in measuring passive coviewing and intentional coviewing can be helpful in

understanding the relationship between attitudes and coviewing.

Since passive coviewing suggests parents affinity to television, personal preferences of

contents, and possibly shared viewing interest with child, we believe that it will be related with

positive parental attitudes. Furthermore, according to the rationale for passive coviewing

delineated earlier, parents do not have their childs benefit in mind when engaging in passive

coviewing (social coviewing). Consequently, it is logical to find no association between passive

coviewing and parental concerns. Although it is logical to say passive coviewing will occur most

often when parents hold positive attitudes toward television, it is also likely that this relationship

is content-specific. Therefore, the following hypothesis and research question are formed.


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H1: There will be a relationship between passive coviewing and positive attitudes.

RQ3: Does the relationship between passive coviewing and attitudes depend on what

content is coviewed?

To date, no studies have examined intentional coviewing, therefore; there exists no

empirical data to suggest the relationship between parental attitudes and intentional coviewing.

However, logical reasoning seems to suggest the possibility for both directions between

intentional coviewing and parental attitudes. It is likely that parents think that television can

benefit their children (i.e., positive attitude) so they engage in intentional coviewing for the

purpose of wanting their children to learn. On the contrary, it is also likely that parents are

concerned of the content (i.e., negative attitude) so they engage in intentional coviewing for

monitoring purposes. As a matter of fact, with the inclusion of two items tapping conscious

coviewing desires, van der Voort et al. (1992) found parents coview both when they believe

television has positive effects and when they believe television have negative effects. Since both

directions are possible between attitude and intentional coviewing, the following research

question was proposed.

RQ4: What is the relationship between intentional coviewing and parental attitudes?

Similarly, while it is true that we are yet to find out the relationship between intentional

coviewing and parental attitudes, it is also possible that their relationship is dependent upon the

content being intentionally coviewed. As stressed throughout this study, content can be an

important determinant of coviewing. Consequently, we ask the following research question:

RQ5: Does the relationship between intentional coviewing and attitudes depend on what

content is coviewed?


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Age Group and Coviewing Frequency

Existing studies are still at odds about how the frequency of coviewing varies with

childrens age. Dorr et al. (1989) and McDonald (1986) found that parents coviewed programs

more with older children than with younger children. They concluded that this is due to the

higher possibility for older children to have similar viewing preferences as their parents.

However, there is also evidence that parental coviewing declines with age (Nielsen data cited in

Robertson, 1979; St. Peters et al., 1991; van der Voort, Nikken, & Van Lil, 1992). In fact, a

study on media in the home by the Annenberg Policy Center (Woodard & Gridina, 2000) found

that of the top ten programs coviewed, half were child-oriented educational programs (e.g. Blue

Clues and Barney) and half were adult oriented entertainment shows (e.g., Who Wants to Be a

Millionaire and Friends). Unfortunately, this still does not specify the relationship between age

groups and coviewing frequencies.

However, it does seem to suggest the possibility of two kinds of coviewing. As

mentioned earlier, passive coviewing captures the ritualistic use of television that reflects

personal preferences in which parents base their choice on (i.e., self goals). Perhaps this logic

can find its resonance in the adult-oriented entertainment programs reported in Woodard et al.s

(2000) study. In accordance with Dorr et al.s (1989) rationale that parents preferences should

be more similar to older children, the following hypothesis was generated.

H2: Passive coviewing will occur more frequently among parents with older children

than among parents with younger children.

As reflected from Woodard et al.s (2000) study, half of the programs coviewed are

child-oriented educational shows. As argued by Warren (2003), it is unlikely for parents to show

interest in child-oriented programs especially when its directed towards younger children such


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as preschoolers. Warren further encouraged future research to re-evaluate the coviewing items

that only measure coviewing for the interest of the program. This gives more weight to the

importance of intentional coviewing that conceptualizes coviewing for an instrumental use of

television and as an intentional behavior. Given the likelihood of parents to coviewing with

younger children but not out of shared interest, it was hypothesized that when parents do coview

with younger children, their coviewing is mainly intentional for the benefit of their children.

H3: Intentional coviewing will occur more frequently among parents with younger

children than among parents with older children.

Obviously, children of different age group prefer different television content. That is,

while age can be a determinant of different types of coviewing, content can be a mediating

factor. Therefore, we ask the follow research questions:

RQ6: How does content affect the amount of passive coviewing parents engage in with

children of different age groups?

RQ8: How does content affect the amount of intentional coviewing parents engage in

with children of different age groups?

Method

Participants

The participants were 398 parents of Kindergarten through 6th

grade children enrolled in

elementary schools or daycare centers in a large Midwestern city. This age range has been

studied in previous mediation research (Valkenburg et al., 1999) and was selected so that our

results would be comparable to the existing work.


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Procedures

After gaining permission from elementary schools and daycare centers, teachers of

Kindergarten through sixth-grade children were asked to distribute to their students envelops

with a solicitation letter, consent form, and an anonymous survey to bring home for parents.

Parents who wished to participate were asked to sign the consent form and complete the 15-

minute survey. Parents were then requested to have their children return the survey and consent

form to the childs teacher upon completion. The response rate ranged from 6.7% to 22.6%

across the seven elementary schools and was 100% for the two daycare centers. The survey

assessed parents intentional coviewing, passive coviewing, attitudes toward television, viewing

habits alone, and their childrens viewing habits alone. Given the importance of genre types, the

above variables were tapped twice: once regarding childrens entertainment contents (e.g.,

cartoons and action-adventure shows) and once regarding childrens educational contents (e.g.,

Sesame Street and Blue Clues). Demographic information on the parents and children were

also collected.

Measures

To measure intentional coviewing, on a scale of 1 (never) to 5 (every time) parents

responded to four items asking how often they watch childrens entertainment programs or

educational programs together with their children with the benefit of the child in mind (e.g.,

watch the show together for the benefit of the child, watch the show together to monitor

the content, watch the show together so that you can intervene program messages when

necessary). Parents could also report that they dont watch the genre type by circling zero. An

intentional coviewing scale for childrens entertainment content (M= 2.92, SD = .86, = .82)


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and an intentional coviewing scale for of childrens educational content (M= 2.90, SD = .97, =

.84) were created by averaging the four content-specific intentional coviewing items.

To measure passive coviewing, parents also reported using the same 5-point scale. Using

Valkenburg et al.s (1999) items for social coviewing, parents indicated how often they watch

childrens entertainment programs or educational programs together with their children for fun

and enjoyment (e.g. watch the show together because of a common interest, watch the

show together for fun, watch the show together because they are yours and your childs

favorite). Parents were also provided with a choice if they dont watch the genre together with

the child at all. A passive coviewing scale for childrens entertainment content (M= 2.80, SD=

1.00, = .92) and a passive coviewing scale for of childrens educational content (M= 2.88, SD

= .99, = .89) were created by averaging the four content-specific passive coviewing items.

To measure parental attitudes toward the two genre types, childrens entertainment and

childrens educational content, parents were asked to indicate their agreement with two

statements capturing positive and negative attitudes. Parents were asked to respond using a 5-

point scale (1= strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree) whether they think the specified genre

1) increase knowledge and awareness of people and the world, and 2) expose their child to

undesirable content such as violence, sex, and bad language. By reverse coding the responses to

the second statement and averaging it with responses from the first statement, a positive attitude

scale was created for childrens entertainment content (M = 2.84, SD = .78, r = .12) and

childrens educational content (M= 4.22, SD = .69, r= .13).

In addition, demographic variables and viewing habit variables, including parents

television viewing alone and childrens television viewing alone, were measured and used as

control variables.


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Result

Demographic data revealed that 65% of the parent respondents were college graduates

and were predominantly Caucasians (77%). Respondents ages ranged from 21-71 (M= 38, SD =

7.45). The gender of the child used as a reference for each parent respondent was evenly split,

with 51% girls (n = 204) and 49% boys (n = 194).

As stressed in this study, content can be an important determinant of the passive and

intentional coviewing. Since RQs 2, 3, 5, 6, and 7 addressed content-specific questions, we

present our analyses by two different content types. The analyses were done once for childrens

entertainment programs and once for childrens educational programs. Due to the fact that

existing mediation studies have mainly examined parents interaction with children regarding

childrens programs (Corder-Bolz, 1980; Nathanson, 1999), childrens entertainment and

educational content were chosen as the focus of this study in order to provide comparable results.

RQ1 asked whether parents use passive coviewing or intentional coviewing more

frequently. A t-test was used to answer this question. For childrens entertainment content,

parents used intentional coviewing more frequently than passive coviewing (t(382) = 2.86,p =

.005;M= 2.92, SD= .86 vs.M= 2.80, SD= 1.00, respectively). As for childrens educational

content, a t-test also revealed that parents used intentional coviewing as frequently as passive

coviewing (t(311) = .45,p =.65;M= 2.90, SD= .97 vs.M= 2.90, SD= .99, respectively).

H1 and RQ2 predicated the relationship between parental attitudes and the two types of

coviewing. Since previous mediation research has identified demographic variables such as

childs age and parental education (Bybee et al., 1982; Nathanson, 1999; van der Voort et al.,

1992) and viewing habits (Nathanson, Eveland, Park, & Paul, 2002) as potential sources to

increase error variance, zero-order correlations was first conducted to identify whether our


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measures of coviewing types and parental attitudes were significantly related to any of the

demographic variables and viewing habits. A correlation matrix of all the dependent and

independent variables used in this study can be found in Table 1. To increase the precision of

our estimates, variables that are significantly correlated with the two types of coviewing and

parental attitudes were controlled where appropriate.

[Insert Table 1 here]

Hierarchical regression was used to test H1 and RQ2 once for childrens entertainment

content and once for childrens educational content. When appropriate, demographic variables

and viewing habits

3

were entered as the first block of the equation followed by parental attitudes

as the second block.

H1 stated that there would be a relationship between passive coviewing and positive

attitude. As shown in Table 2, for childrens entertainment content, passive coviewing was

positively predicted by parents positive attitudes ( = .25,p < .01). However, passive coviewing

for childrens educational content was not significantly predicted by parents positive attitudes (

= -.02,p =.68).

RQ2 asked about the relationship between intentional coviewing and parental attitudes.

As shown in Table 2, for both childrens entertainment and educational content, intentional

coviewing did not yield significant relationship with parental attitudes ( = .08,p = .12; = -.04,

p = .50, respectively).

[Insert Table 2 here]

H2 predicted that passive coviewing would occur more frequently among parents with

older children than among parents with younger children. An independent sample t-test

3Parents and childrens viewing habits were measured by asking each parent respondents how often they view the

specified content alone and how often their child view the specified content alone.


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suggested no significant difference in passive coviewing of childrens entertainment content

between parents of younger and older children (t(381) = -.12,p =.92;M= 2.79, SD= .97 vs.M=

2.80, SD= 1.05, respectively). Further, no significant difference was found for passive coviewing

of childrens educational content between parents of younger and older children (t(310) = -.38,p

=.71;M= 2.86, SD= 1.00 vs.M= 2.91, SD= .95, respectively).

Lastly, H3 predicted that intentional coviewing would occur more frequently among

parents with younger children than among parents with older children. For childrens

entertainment content, a t-test revealed that parents with younger children engaged in intentional

coviewing more than did parents with older children (t(382) = 3.11,p


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motivational aspects but also to the importance for mediation measures to be content-specific. In

terms of reconceptualizing, our results revealed that parents seem to use not only passive

coviewing, which has already been identified by previous research (Valkenburg et al., 1999), but

also intentional coviewing. This is especially true when the coviewing content is childrens

entertainment programs.

The same results also suggested that with the change in content, parents might change

their coviewing type. Given that the nature of childrens entertainment content consists of

cartoons and action-adventure shows that were found to have the most depiction of violence

among all types of television programs (Wilson et al., 2002), it is logical that parents are inclined

to intentionally coview this content with the purpose to monitor their childrens television

consumption. Given the nature of the content, parents might even have an inherent dislike of

such content and, therefore, engage less in passive coviewing. Consequently, when parents

coview entertainment programs with their child, it is more likely due to their motivation to

monitor or intervene rather than because they enjoy or like the show.

As for childrens educational content, our data did not reveal that parents use intentional

coviewing as much as passive coviewing for this specific content type. One possible reason

could be that the nature of the content is inherently positive so parents coview intentionally as

well as passively. They coview intentionally because they think its important to do so and that

they think it will benefit their child. On the other hand, they coview passively just as much

because they like and enjoy the content for its prosocial/educational features.

While our results suggested more intentional coviewing than passive coviewing for

entertainment content, it also revealed that positive attitudes could predict parental passive

coviewing of entertainment content but not intentional coviewing. That is, the more positively


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the parent thinks of the entertainment content, the more likely he/she will coview passively but

not intentionally. This is consistent with previous findings that more favorable attitudes toward

childrens entertainment content, such as violent television, can predict coviewing that stem from

parent-child shared preferences but not from parental intention to protect children (Nathanson,

2001b). Since past research also found that other forms of mediation such as active and

restrictive mediation to be associated more with parental concerns and negative attitudes rather

than positive attitudes (Nathanson, 2001b; Valkenburg et al., 1999), by singling out intentional

coviewing, we are identifying one aspect of coviewing that shares more motivational similarity

with these forms of mediation. With a majority of mediation research focuses on active

mediation during viewing, it seems even more important that future research includes measures

of intentional coviewing and further examines its relationship with active mediation.

Although we successfully predicted passive coviewings relationship with parental

attitudes in the context of entertainment, we did not find significant relationship between attitude

and the two coviewing types of educational content. One possible reason could simply be that

educational content is inherently different in nature than entertainment content that made

coviewing this particular content type a unique parental approach. However, a close examination

of our attitudinal scale revealed another possible reason could be a weakness of the scale. Given

that weve only used two items for the scale, one measuring positive and one measuring negative

attitudes, it is possible that the scale did not fully capture our respondents attitudes. A further

examination of the wording in each attitudinal item suggests one more limitation to our

questionnaire construction. While the object in the positive attitudinal item refers to people in

general, the object in the negative attitudinal item refers to the respondents child. According to

Nathanson et al. (2002), there is a third-person effect on parents perceptions of media effect.


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They found that parents perceive media to have more harmful effects on other children than on

their own. It is possible that with our inconsistent wording of the attitudinal items, our

respondents thought of other people when answering one item and their child when answering

the other. If this is the case, it adds more problems to the validity of our attitudinal scale. Future

research should be aware of this issue.

In addition to exploring intentional and passive coviewings relationship with parental

attitudes, this study also investigated the relationship between coviewing and childrens age. It

appears that for entertainment content, parents do not vary in their frequency of passive

coviewing as their child get older; however, they do tend to use intentional coviewing more

frequently with younger children than with older children. Given that for childrens

entertainment content, passive coviewing was found to be related with parental attitudes but not

childs age, perhaps it is suggesting that it is parents attitudes that determine the use of passive

coviewing rather than the childs age. This again confirms the underlying conceptualization of

passive coviewing as a mediation embedded with more parent-oriented purpose than child-

oriented purpose. On the other hand, our data showed that parents engaged in intentional

coviewing more with younger children than older children.

Since media effect studies using a developmental approach have found that younger

children are more impressionable and vulnerable to media influence, it is understandable that

parents use intentional coviewing more with this age group. In fact, Valkenburg et al. (1999)

found that due to parents high concern for televisions negative effects on younger children,

parents use active and restrictive mediation more with younger children than with older children.

This again suggests the possible relationship intentional coviewing might have with other

mediation behaviors. Since this is the first study to identify coviewings intentional aspect, more


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research is needed to verify its relationship with predictor variables already identified in

mediation research. Furthermore, research should begin to explore each coviewing types

relationship with child outcome variables.

Unlike the results from using entertainment content, our data using educational content

did not yield significant relationship between coviewing types and childrens age. That is,

parents intentionally coviewed educational content with younger children as frequently as they

did with older children. Parents also passively coviewed educational content with younger

children as frequently as they did with older children. For educational content, age doesnt seem

to predict what type of coviewing parents use while entertainment content does. This again

suggests something inherently different about educational content and the importance to specify

content for more accurate measure.

Taken together, the results of this study provided evidence that coviewing has two

motivational aspects, intentional and passive. This study also highlighted the importance of

content when measuring parental mediation behaviors. The frequency and the predictors of

intentional and passive coviewing will depend on what content is being coviewed. Future work

should continue to incorporate both aspects of coviewing and content types to allow mediation

studies to gain more accurate measure of the concepts.


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Table 1

Relationships between Intentional and Passive Coviewing and Predictors

Entertainment Content Educational Content

Intentional cov. Passive cov. Intentional cov. Passive cov.

Parent edu. -.14** -.24** -.20** -.21**

Kid age -.19** -.04 -.11** -.06

Parent view alone .25*** .36** .39*** .45***

Kid view alone -.18** -.02 .02 .13*

Positive attitudes4 .09 -.29** -.01 .00

*p< .05, **p


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Table 2

Predictors of Passive and Intentional Coviewing of Childrens Entertainment and Educational

Content

Passive coviewing Intentional coviewing

Entertainment Educational Entertainment Educational

Parent edu. -.15** -.10 -.09 -.12*

Kid age -.04 -.15** -.08

Parent view alone .33*** .39*** .26*** .34***

Kid view alone -.11* -.09 -.24*** -.18**

R2 .16*** .17*** .15*** .17***

Positive attitudes5

.25*** -.02 .08 -.04

R2 change .05*** .00 .00 .00

Regression coefficients are standardized coefficients. *p< .05, **p


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