Address the following in 500-750 words:
Design either a quasi or experimental study to investigate the variables. What is the hypothesis? Describe the types of hypotheses with respect to testing. What does the experimental method allow that the correlation design does not?
Identify the independent variable. Identify the dependent variable.
Describe how the group will define operationally and measure the variables.
Describe how the group will obtain a random sample of participants.
Discuss how the group will ensure the study has high internal validity. Will the subjects be assigned randomly to the groups? Why or why not.
Are there any ethical concerns about the treatment of participants emerging from the experiment?
Consider the data presented, would you use t or F score? Why? include the appropriate effect size.
Submit an SPSS output for the quasi or true experimental study.
Include at least two to four scholarly sources.
Violent Video Games and Physical Aggression: Evidence for a Selection Effect Among Adolescents
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Johannes Breuer University of Münster
Jens Vogelgesang University of Erfurt
Thorsten Quandt University of Münster
Ruth Festl University of Münster and University of
Hohenheim
Longitudinal studies investigating the relationship of aggression and violent video games are still scarce. Most of the previous studies focused on children or younger adolescents and relied on convenience samples. This paper presents data from a 1-year longitudinal study of N � 276 video game players aged 14 to 21 drawn from a representative sample of German gamers. We tested both whether the use of violent games predicts physical aggression (i.e., the socialization hypothesis) and whether physical aggression predicts the subsequent use of violent games (i.e., the selection hypothesis). The results support the selection hypotheses for the group of adolescents aged 14 to 17. For the group of young adults (18–21), we found no evidence for both the socialization and the selection hypothesis. Our findings suggest that the use of violent video games is not a substantial predictor of physical aggression, at least in the later phases of adolescence and early adulthood. The differences we found between the age groups show that age plays an important role in the relationship of aggression and violent video games and that research in this area can benefit from a more individu- alistic perspective that takes into account both intraindividual developmental change and interindividual differences between players.
Keywords: video games, violence, aggression, adolescents, young adults
From the earliest investigations into the rela- tionship of video game1 use and aggression in the 1980s (Cooper & Mackie, 1986; Dominick, 1984; Silvern & Williamson, 1987; Winkel, Novak, & Hopson, 1987) until today, hundreds
of experimental and correlational studies have been conducted. Despite the large number of studies, the debate about the link between video games and aggression is ongoing, not only in politics and the mass media, but also within academia (Bushman & Huesmann, 2014; Elson & Ferguson, 2014a, 2014b; Krahé, 2014; War- burton, 2014). While all of the available meta- analyses (Anderson et al., 2010; Ferguson, 2007; Ferguson & Kilburn, 2009; Sherry, 2001, 2007) found a relationship between aggression and the use of (violent) video games, the size and interpretation of this connection differ largely between these studies; as do the defini-
1 We use the term video games as an umbrella term that includes all types of digital games, whether they are played on a PC, home consoles, handhelds, or mobile devices. We decided to use “video game” because it is the most common term in the literature and it is easier to read than the composite “computer and video games” or the more aca- demic denomination “digital games.”
This article was published Online First February 16, 2015.
Johannes Breuer, Department of Communication, Uni- versity of Münster; Jens Vogelgesang, Department of Com- munication, University of Erfurt; Thorsten Quandt, Depart- ment of Communication, University of Münster; Ruth Festl, Department of Communication, University of Münster, and Department of Communication, University of Hohenheim.
The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Pro- gramme (FP7/2007–2013) under grant agreement number 240864 (SOFOGA).
Correspondence concerning this article should be ad- dressed to Johannes Breuer, Department of Communication, University of Münster, Bispinghof 9-14, 48143 Münster, Germany. E-mail: johannes.breuer@uni-muenster.de
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Psychology of Popular Media Culture © 2015 American Psychological Association 2015, Vol. 4, No. 4, 305–328 2160-4134/15/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000035
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000035
tions and measurement of violent content and aggression in the studies that were included in these meta-analyses. In addition, some meta- analyses only found a relationship for aggres- sive thoughts or feelings, but not for aggressive behavior. There is also a controversy about what exactly causes this link and, most impor- tantly, about the direction of the (potential) ef- fects.
Experimental research on video games and aggression has been criticized for a lack of ecological validity and the unstandardized use of measures of aggression that have not been properly validated (Ferguson & Rueda, 2009; Ferguson, Smith, Miller-Stratton, Fritz, & Hei- nrich, 2008; Ritter & Eslea, 2005; Tedeschi & Quigley, 1996). The issue of the real-world implications of findings from laboratory studies is further complicated by the fact that they can only investigate short-term effects that often only last for a few minutes (Barlett, Branch, Rodeheffer, & Harris, 2009). Cross-sectional correlational research, on the other hand, typi- cally has larger samples, but is unsuitable for making any claims about the direction of the effect. Longitudinal studies combine the advan- tages of cross-sectional and experimental stud- ies, as they use larger samples than most exper- imental studies and allow to sort out the temporal precedence between the variables of interest. Although it is still possible that addi- tional variables are responsible for the temporal order, given a sound control of potentially rel- evant third variables, panel studies allow to make claims about long-term effects that both cross-sectional and experimental research do not allow. Nonetheless, while panel data can help to determine direction and strengths of effects by testing for covariation and controlling for temporal order, only controlled experiments provide the means to actually prove causality (Finkel, 1995). Compared with the abundance of cross-sectional survey studies and experi- mental research, panel studies on video games and aggression are still scarce. The meta- analysis by Anderson et al. (2010), for example, included 34 effect sizes from longitudinal stud- ies2 and Ferguson and Kilburn (2009) used data from five longitudinal studies. While several longitudinal studies use a composite score for media violence that includes video games (e.g., Ferguson, Ivory, & Beaver, 2013; Gentile, Coyne, & Walsh, 2011; Krahé, Busching, &
Möller, 2012; Krahé & Möller, 2010; Ostrov, Gentile, & Crick, 2006), there are relatively few that look specifically at the effects of video games. Among those studies that explicitly in- vestigate video games, some only look at rela- tively brief periods of several months, and al- most all studies rely on convenience samples and focus on children or adolescents.
In longitudinal research on media violence and aggression, there are two seemingly com- peting hypotheses. The socialization hypothesis states that the repeated use of violent media leads to an increase of aggression over time, whereas the selection hypothesis is based on the idea of selective exposure (Zillmann & Bryant, 1985) and posits that individuals who are more aggressive will tend to choose (more) violent media content. The downward spiral model (Slater, Henry, Swaim, & Anderson, 2003) combines these hypotheses by proposing that individuals higher in trait aggression will choose more violent media content, which, in turn, increases their level of aggression. As with the experimental and cross-sectional studies, evidence from longitudinal studies on the rela- tionship between (violent) video games and ag- gression is mixed at best. Some studies found a media effect (Anderson et al., 2008; Hopf, Hu- ber, & Wei�, 2008; Möller & Krahé, 2009), while others report selection effects (von Salisch, Vogelgesang, Kristen, & Oppl, 2011), provide evidence for both (Slater et al., 2003), or found no effects (Ferguson, 2011; Ferguson, Garza, Jerabeck, Ramos, & Galindo, 2013; Fer- guson, San Miguel, Garza, & Jerabeck, 2012; Wallenius & Punamäki, 2008; Williams & Skoric, 2005).
A limitation of the previous longitudinal studies is that almost all of them rely on con- venience samples that are mostly composed of students from elementary schools, high schools, or colleges located in the areas where the re- spective researchers are based. Most studies also focus on specific grades, thereby reducing the age range of participants. In addition, even longitudinal studies often only test one direction of effects; mostly the socialization hypothesis.
2 Anderson et al. (2010) do not report the number of longitudinal studies in their paper. This number should be substantially lower than the number of effect sizes, as most longitudinal studies include cross-sectional and longitudinal effects (often also for different dependent variables).
306 BREUER, VOGELGESANG, QUANDT, AND FESTL
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