The Influence of Television Viewing on Adolescent, Behaviour among Public Secondary School Students in Obio/Akpor LGA in Rivers State

Abstract

This research work studied the influence of television viewing on adolescent, behaviour among public secondary school students in Obio  Akpor Local Government area. The research was carried out sequel to the need to determine the extent to which television can influence adolescents’ career choice, violent behaviour, dressing, drinking and sexuality. A questionnaire was drawn consisting of 25 questions covering the five research questions. This instrument was selected after subjecting it to a test-retest procedure that yielded a reliability coefficient of 0.72 when correlated with Pearson Product Moment. The questionnaire was administered to a total of 1000 respondents in 10 schools in Obio  Akpor LGA of Rivers State. The respondents were classified into those with positive and those with negative attitudes. The five hypotheses emanating from the research questions were further subjected to Chi-square analysis, while the degree of association or significance was determined by applying Pearson’s Coefficient of Contingency. The results obtained indicate that television viewing can impact both positively and negatively on the behaviour of most adolescents. It was therefore recommended that television operators should give more airtime to programmes that will impact positively on adolescents such as career and moral guidance and less airtime to those with negative impact such as most home video depicting violence.