Adolescents' TV Relations

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Abstract
In earlier research into the relationships between the adult TV viewer and the TV content consumed by him, three relationships have been mentioned as especially interesting: para-social interaction (imaginary interaction but not identification with the personae of the screen), capture (both interaction and identification with the personae of the screen), and long-term identification (possibly an effect of capture). This paper, mainly methodological in its approach, presents three scales measuring these relationships with respect to school-children's TV use. The scales are tested for validity by means of the multitrait-multimethod technique. In connection with the validity tests the scales are shown to behave differentially when related to different TV content viewed by the respondent. This finding casts some doubt on the current practice of asking respondents about use of and attitudes towards TV in general. Finally, the scales are related to several social characteristics of the respondents. It turns out that adolescents-in contrast to adults-do not seem to use para-social interaction with TV personae as a functional alternative to real interaction.

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