Research Findings

Results released today from the National Annenberg Survey of Youth (NASY) indicate that although concerns about excessive Internet use may be justified, heavy use of television may be an even larger concern. In one of the most extensive national surveys of media habits over a two-year period, six different types of media use were identified

Although athletics is a healthy and popular extracurricular activity in American high schools, it also has its risks. The recent poker craze among adolescents in the U.S. was driven largely by interest in poker play among high school male athletes, a just-released analysis of adolescent gambling in the National Annenberg Surveys of Youth (NASY) indicates.

The new volume, The Dynamic Genome and Mental Health: The Role of Genes and Environments in Youth Development, presents the results of a conference sponsored by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania and Oxford University Press on the interrelations between genetic and environmental influences on youth mental health and development. The book

Joelle Sano Gilmore, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at APPC’s Annenberg Center for Advanced Study in Communication, presented research findings at the annual meeting of the Eastern Sociological Society in Philadelphia, PA on February 25, 2011. Dr. Gilmore discussed similarities between corporate underwriting spots during children’s programming on PBS and advertisements during children’s programming on commercial networks, including the use of child-friendly production techniques and the prevalence of spots

Results released today from the National Annenberg Survey of Youth reveal that 1 out of 7 or 14% of adolescents and young adults have experienced being a victim of cyberbullying (see Table 1 below). Those who experience cyberbullying report higher rates of thinking seriously about suicide in the past year (see Table 2 below). The

The annual analysis by the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) of news reporting during the previous winter holiday period reveals that newspapers continued to perpetuate the myth that suicides rise during the holidays. The proportion of stories that supported the myth during the 2009-2010 holidays remained at approximately the same level as during the previous

Annenberg School for Communication alumna Shawnika J. Hull, Ph.D., and Annenberg Public Policy Center scholars Michael Hennessy, Ph.D., Amy Bleakley, Ph.D., Martin Fishbein, Ph.D., and Amy Jordan, Ph.D., published a paper, “Identifying the Causal Pathways from Religiosity to Delayed Adolescent Sexual Behavior” in The Journal of Sex Research (October 2010). The authors used data from the Annenberg Sex and Media study,

An analysis by Annenberg Public Policy Center researchers Sharon Sznitman and Dan Romer shows that international and U.S. state differences in the emotional well-being of adolescents are strongly related to their overall levels of academic achievement. In addition, these differences are strongly related to levels of poverty at the national and state level. The article

Despite efforts by the federal government to impose restrictions on Internet gambling, college age youth are visiting online gambling sites at a growing rate, according to the latest National Annenberg Survey of Youth (NASY). Compared to the last survey conducted in 2008, monthly use of Internet gambling sites shot up this year from 4.4% to

Researchers have long noted that movies and television shows seldom show drivers wearing seatbelts. In an analysis of high school youths’ exposure to such entertainment, APPC researchers Sally Dunlop and Dan Romer found that males with heavy exposure to such programming were less likely to think that their friends and school peers used seatbelts. Furthermore,