ABSTRACT
It is highly unusual to find anything resembling a “natural experiment”
where researchers are provided with an opportunity to observe the effects
of factors held to be influential but impossible to isolate. One such factor
is television. All know it is supposed to have effects on children’s behavior
(Gunter & McAleer, 1990), but it is very difficult to measure these (Gaunt-
lett, 1995; Hodge & Tripp, 1986), especially in natural rather than artifi-
cially contrived circumstances. A number of studies including Brown et al.
(1974) in Scotland, Murray & Kippax (1978) in Australia, Williams &
Handford (1986) in Canada, and Mutz et al. (1993) in South Africa, have
attempted this by studying the impact of television in communities with
different levels of exposure or by monitoring responses to its introduc-
tion. One of the earliest and most influential studies was undertaken in
the UK by Himmelweit et al. (1958), who compared children who were
viewers with controls who were not, making use of a survey of children’s
leisure habits by means of diaries kept by children aged 10-11 years and
13-14 years. They also undertook a rare “before and after” study of the in-
troduction of television to Norwich. The research reported here is a some-
what similar study that took place over the period 1994-1998 of the ef-
fects of the introduction of broadcast television in St. Helena on children
aged 9-12 years.
