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Individuation and television coviewing in the family: developmental trends in the viewing behavior of adolescents.
The literature on television viewing deals with two related problems separately: changes in the amount of television viewing over the life span of individuals and intrafamilial conditions of individual viewing amounts. The family context of viewing is rarely discussed in connection with the relationship between phases of life and phases of increasing and stagnating television viewing. So far, there has been no study that is based on continuously collected data and investigates the way intrafamilial viewing configurations change with the age of family members, and at the same time with transitions in the family system. Nor is there a study that investigates how individual television viewing varies with these predictable changes in the social context. In those cases where age and social context are examined in relation to the amount of television viewing, analyses are based on data from a single questionnaire or short-term diaries and not on longitudinal data of any kind (Dorr, Kovaric, & Doubleday, 1989; McDonald, 1986; McLeod, Fitzpatrick, Glynn, & Fallis, 1982). The goal of this study is to fill this gap by linking theoretical assumptions about developmental trends in adolescent television viewing with hypotheses on intergenerational coviewing.
Our point of departure is the controversial ideas about intrafamilial configurations of television viewing and the impact different modes of parental television viewing have on the viewing behavior of the younger generation. In this context, two conflicting models of family television viewing are primarily discussed: the "correspondence model" and the "independence model." According to the correspondence model, children adopt patterns of television viewing that are typical for their family and mediated by established parental norms and standards, general attitudes towards the media,...See the full content of this document
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