The Impact of Leisure-Time Television on School Learning: A Research Synthesis

To integrate empirical findings concerning the impact of leisure time television viewing on student achievement in grades K-12, 274 correlations were assembled or calculated from 23 educational and psychological review articles, doctoral dissertations, statewide assessments, national surveys, articles from refereed journals, technical reports, books, and unpublished papers. For each study, characteristics of the sample, type of outcome, quality of the study, method of collecting viewing data, mean hours of viewing, and strength and direction of observed relationships were coded. The overall correlation of hours of televiewing and achievement is negative but small (–.05). Regardless of the sample size, year and location of the research, the effect remains consistent. The overall effect, however, is not constant across the range of viewing times. The effects are slightly positive for up to 10 hours of viewing a week, but beyond 10 hours the effects are negative and increasingly more deleterious until viewing time reaches 35 to 40 hours, beyond which additional viewing has little effect. Females and high IQ children are more adversely affected than other groups.