Williams (1981)

Aim
Wanted to measure children's behaviour before and after television had been introduced to the town and also to compare the children's behaviour with that in other towns that did have TV.

Procedure
It was a natural experiment. Measured a range of behaviours before and after the town received television.

Independent Variable: Before and after television was produced.

Dependent Variable:
 * aggression of children in the playground and classroom
 * leisure activities the community were involved in
 * intelligence level of children
 * creative and reading ability of children

To measure aggression, two observers watched children very closely in the school playground and classroom They only started observing once the children were used to their presence to make sure the children did not behave differently because they were being observed. They measured the number of physical aggression and verbal aggression seen. The participant's leisure time was recorded to see if time spent on leisure activities changed.

They measured 3 towns, Notel: had no television, Unitel: had only one TV channel, Multitel: had many TV channels. All three towns were studies before TV was introduced in Notel, and for two years later.

Findings/Results

 * The children were twice as aggressive after television was introduced.
 * Children and adults spend less than half the time they had spent previously on other leisure activities.
 * Children began to see increased gender differences between boys and girls after watching television.
 * Children became less creative.
 * IQ scores dropped slightly.
 * Although aggression in all towns increased over the two-year study, aggression in NOtel children increased far more in comparison. But overall Unitel and Multitel were quite similar.

Conclusion
Notel showed increased levels of aggression because of the introduction of television; we know this because aggression increased far more here than in towns that already received television. Television also reduced time spent on leisure activities and lowered creativity and intelligence slightly.

Evaluation
Strengths: Weaknesses:
 * Natural experiment, greater realism.
 * Children monitored over a long period of time, behaviour before and after TV could be directly compared.
 * Children were observed in their natural surroundings.
 * The researchers did not control what or how much TV the children watched, or the adult supervision and control of viewing.
 * Observations might be biased because the researchers may have expected higher levels of aggression.