NEW YORK -- NBC released a report Tuesday on its study of children and adolescent TV viewers which concludes that there is no 'causal' link between television violence and the development of aggressive behavior patterns.
The report -- 14 years in the making from 1969-83 at a cost of 'at least $1.5 million and possibly $2 million' NBC said -- was based on a survey of 2,400 elementary school children and 800 teenage boys in two Midwestern cities over a three-year period from 1970-73.
The network said it chose Minneapolis, Minn., and Fort Worth, Texas, for the study because both are located in the Central Time Zone, where prime-time television programs -- which the network feels contain more violence -- start one hour earlier than in either coastal time zone.
The research was led by William Rubens, NBC vice president of Research, Dr. J. Ronald Milavsky, NBC vice president for News and Social Research, Horst Stipp, NBC director of social research, and Ronald Kessler, associate professor of Sociology, University of Michigan.
In contrast to a recent National Institute of Mental Health report stating that there is 'overwhelming' evidence that television violence causes aggression, NBC found that if such a connection existed, it would be too small to be detectable even by the most sophisticated testing methods.
'The investigation found no evidence of a causal connection between television violence and the development of aggressive behavior patterns among children and adolescents,' NBC said.
Results of the study have been published by Academic Press in a 505-page book, 'Television and Aggression: A Panel Study,' as part of its 'Quantitative Studies in Social Relations.'
'This was going to see the light of day regardless of how it came out,' Rubens said at a news conference at NBC headquarters in Manhattan.
Kessler said he believed the NIMH reached its conclusions because 'that was the position they had going in.'
He emphasized that the NBC project focused the effects of violent television on the long-term development of behavior patterns.
'Television has short-term arousal effects,' Kessler said - pre-schoolers might do more hitting on the playground if their play period follows viewing of a violent show rather than 'Lassie.' 'But these are quickly extinguished in the real world.'
Rubens said NBC used 'a representative sample of programming' from all three networks and the independent stations in the two cities and social studies already published were used in assigning each program a violence rating.
Among some of the programs involved in the study were 'Mod Squad,' 'Gunsmoke,' 'Mission Impossible,' 'Bewitched,' 'Dragnet,' 'FBI,' 'Kung Fu,' wrestling, and a variety of Saturday morning 'kiddie' shows, Rubens said.
The youngsters were not asked to alter their viewing habits in any way.
'The key element of the (NBC's) panel survey is repeated measurements of the television viewing and aggression of the same individuals at several points in time,' NBC said.
The network said each of the study's participants, their parents, peers and teachers were queried by interview or questionnaires administered in their classrooms each week during the in-field portion of the study.
'The big advantage offered by the panel is that each person in the study serves as his or her own control,' the network said.
Kessler agreed that the study was not up-to-the-minute in that it did not involve today's programs but he said he felt television was more violent in 1970-73 than it is now.
''The Untouchables'' was on five days a week in the two markets,' Kessler said referring to the series about organized crime fighter Elliot Ness in the heyday of Chicago mobdom. 'There is nothing on TV like that today.'
NBC's assault-packed hit, ''The A Team' is a caricature of violence and 'The Untouchables' was deadly serious,' he said.
The study took 14 years, Rubens said, because of the type of research conducted, the network's use of academic consultants and the time it took -- three years -- to analyze the data once it was in house.
