42 At the third testing session, several weeks after experimental viewing had ended, the youngsters were again asked how many shows they had seen in the series during the last two weeks. The youngsters who had been watching the programs in their class rooms reported voluntarily watching three times as many shows as the youngsters who had not been exposed to the series (p<001). The mean number of home programs viewed by the experimental group was 1.10, while the control group watched .32 programs on the average. In addition, 31% of the experimental subjects vs. 24% of the control subjects said they intended to view the program that evening. This is a striking effect from the classroom exposure to the television series. It suggests perhaps that the development of preferences can indeed follow from deliberate and even involuntary exposure to programs of a particular genre.* From this, we may conclude that youngsters who watch a public affairs television series in a classroom situation are far more likely to voluntarily continue to follow that same series once the classroom exposure has ended. Political Efficacy A three-item index tapped the individual's sense of political effectiveness. However, in our analysis of the first testing sessions results, * Between the end of the experimental viewing sessions and the final testing session, the Watergate hearings achieved prominence on public television. During the third testing session, we introduced a number of questions which dealt with the individual's interest in the Watergate hearings, watching of the hearings, and expressed intention to watch some of the committee hearings. It was generally believed that if exposure in the classroom to the public affairs television series had some spillover impact, it might increase interest and media exposure more among those who had been in the experimental treatment. None of the data support that proposition. There was no greater interest, or talking about, or watching of Watergate among the experimental subjects. 43 marginally below. To it was found that the experimental subjects expressed significantly more efficacy than the control subjects. This difference was retained at the second testing and neither group had altered their level of political effectiveness differentially (Table 2). Therefore, it was not possible in this study to determine if the public television series viewed had an impact on the political efficacy of the adolescents in the experimental group. Inasmuch as they were higher to begin with, they may already have been close to whatever ceiling was possible in terms of a non-voting group's sense of political effectiveness. The experimental group was slightly above the index midpoint in terms of perceived efficacy; the control group was determine whether greater efficacy could be a result of such exposure, additional research is needed. We also looked at the individual items of the efficacy index to determine if this initial difference was persistent across items. It was persistent for two of the three items those dealing with whether public officials cared much about what people think and the one which dealt with the influence of voting on the way things are run. control and experimental groups did not differ initially in terms of how complicated government seemed to be, but they also showed no differential gain on this item at the second testing. Nothing can be derived from this particular study about efficacy as a consequence of public television political affairs exposure. Attitude Toward State Legislators The Each of the respondents was asked at the first and second testings to indicate how smart, how trustworthy and how hardworking he felt the legis lators were. The baselines for the individual items indicate that at T1, the respondents felt the legislatores were relatively smart, fairly hardworking, N=429 subjects completing questionnaires at first two sessions. Analyses controlling for initial Experimental-Control Group differences in Political Efficacy are discussed at end of this section. 44 45 but they were not sure whether the legislators were trustworthy. There was a persistent trend on each of the three items for an increment on the attri butes in the experimental group. The main increment was on the trustworthy item. It differentiated the experimental from the control subjects. Watching the television series caused the experimental viewers to believe that the legislators were significantly more trustworthy than that same group felt they were at T1 and significantly more trustworthy than the control group perceived the legislators to be at T2. More reliable than the individual items was the composite index formed by summing responses to all three attribute items. This overall index indicated that the control and experimental groups did not differ in their original attitude, that the control group did not change over time, but the overall attitude of the experimental viewers was significantly more favorable after watching the public television series.* Two other items used at the first two testings also fit into the overall notion of attitude toward legislators or the legislature. In one, we asked the participants how much of the business of the legislature they felt was conducted in secrecy. There was a dramatic shift in the experimental group which was nowhere matched among the control subjects, i.e., 51% thought * The legislature programs also featured a subdued, thoughtful interview with the amiable governor of Florida, Reuben Askew. The experimental and control groups were compared at T2 on their evaluations of the governor along three dimensions. The experimental subjects rated him significantly nicer (on the nice-mean dimension), quieter (on the quiet-loud dimension), and more serious (on the serious-humorous dimension). The summed me an across these three items was 4.32 for the experimental subjects and 3.66 for the control subjects (p<.001). These evaluations were not measured 46 "most or some" work was done in secret before, but only 25% expressed this attitude after. A principal impact of the TV series was to induce an attitude that the legislature does its business where the public can see it done. A further test of attitudes toward the legislators was asking the youngsters if they themselves might want to be a legislator after they finish school. There were no significant changes within or between the experimental or control groups on this item. they did not think that they might want to be a legislator. Overall, watching the television series on public television in the classroom created more positive attitudes about the legislators and also toward the manner in which they conducted their business. Political Knowledge Knowledge was tapped at two points in time and covered three kinds of cognitive information: (1) basic knowledge about the Florida Legislature, not dependent on watching the series, was tapped at T1 and T2; (2) knowledge about current legislative actions, and (3) knowledge about how the legislature goes about doing its business were tapped separately at the second testing session, after the experimental groups had been exposed to the public affairs television series. The findings are in Tables 3 and 4. Let us begin with the overall knowledge index which tapped more general information. The range of possible scores was 0 to 10. It is worthwhile to point out that the baseline level of knowledge at the first testing session was a fraction larger than three correct items out of ten. For the experimental subjects, the net effect of watching the television series was a significant increment in their overall knowledge; for the control group there was little increase during this time period (Table 3). The differential change |