A new study published in the online journal Media and Communication finds that Americans’ answer to one of the long-running questions in a Gallup poll – are you afraid to walk alone in your neighborhood at night? – may be influenced by the amount of violence shown on popular prime-time television dramas.
Viewers of “The Colbert Report” who watched faux-conservative TV host Stephen Colbert set up a super PAC and 501(c)(4) organization during the last presidential election cycle proved to be better informed about campaign financing and the role of money in politics than viewers of other news channels and shows, according to a new study by researchers at the Annenberg Public Policy Center.
Working memory, the ability to hold information in your mind and use it to guide behavior, develops through childhood and adolescence and is key for successful performance at school and work. A new study has found that parents’ education is related to children’s performance on tasks of working memory and that neighborhood characteristics are not.
Better driver training and closer parental supervision of young drivers could reduce some of the major risks that lead to teen driver crashes, according to a review of recent studies published online this month in the Journal of Adolescent Health. “A lot of crashes involving adolescent drivers are due to inexperience, as opposed to recklessness or the inability to pay attention to the road,” said the lead author, Daniel Romer.
The declining visibility of tobacco products on prime-time U.S. broadcast television shows is linked to a drop in smoking of nearly two packs of cigarettes per adult per year, according to a study by Annenberg Public Policy Center researchers published online in the journal Tobacco Control. The study found that the drop in portrayals of smoking and tobacco use in TV dramas mirrored the decline in consumption
A pair of studies involving more than 450 parents in Philadelphia that examined the effects of household smoking bans found that homes that imposed smoking bans were effective at reducing the number of cigarettes smoked at home. One study, in the American Journal of Public Health, found that smoking levels in a home did not determine whether a home imposed a ban; the other, in Preventive Medicine, profiled smoking policies in homes with children under the age of 13.
The proportion of U.S. adults identifying themselves as Independent has grown significantly over the last four presidential elections, rivaling both major parties, according to a national study by the Annenberg Public Policy Center that is being published in Presidential Studies Quarterly.
A national study of teenagers suggests that school drug testing did not deter them from starting to smoke tobacco or marijuana or drink alcohol. But in high schools that had a “positive school climate,” teens were less likely to start smoke cigarettes or marijuana, according to the study, in the January issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. The study compared the effectiveness over one year of school policies of student drug testing with a positive school climate.
A study in Addiction Biology of smokers’ brain activity has found that graphic anti-smoking warning labels that produce a strong emotional response are effective at deterring the urge to smoke, according to researchers at the Annenberg Public Policy Center and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
Nearly 90 percent of the top-grossing movies over a 25-year period show main characters acting violently, and in 77 percent of the movies those characters also engage in sex-, alcohol- or tobacco-related behavior, a new study has shown. The study published in Pediatrics, by researchers at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, found that more than half of the biggest PG-13 movies featured a main character acting violently and involved in either drinking, sexual behavior or smoking within a five-minute segment.