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Research Key Findings

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The following are a list of key findings from my research on parental assessment of video game content appropriateness for their children. You can read the first round of published results here.

  • There were no parents in the study who were able to definitively name all of the parts of the ESRB Ratings System or all six ratings and over two-thirds did not know what process games went through to get rated. This resulted in the majority of interviewed parents knowing little to nothing about the ratings system even if they claimed they used it.
  • Interviewed parents had very specific criteria they used to judge video game appropriateness against and once any of those lines were crossed, the game was considered unsuitable. Though violence was a concern for interviewed parents, perceptions of violence were far more nuanced than the ESRB Rating System descriptors were able to convey, thus many had to do further research to properly assess the game and make sense of the content. Sexual content, however, was of a far higher concern than violence even for those interviewed parents who considered themselves very liberal in the types of games they allowed their children to play.
  • Interviewed parents with special needs children considered the needs of their child and the ability for a game to help him or her as more important than staying within content that was age appropriate.
  • Based on the interviews, every family’s and child’s needs are different, including children within the same family. Therefore, a single information system, such as the ESRB Ratings System, may never be able to completely fulfill all of a parent’s information needs as they attempt to bridge their knowledge gap. As long as it provides a place to start, that may be all it needs to do.
  • Relevant to the previous finding, interviewed parents attempted to bridge their knowledge gaps in multiple ways in order to assess game content and make sense of it. These included using the ESRB Ratings System, Internet searches (including specific sites as well as more general results) to find game reviews (both community and professional), game marketing (including websites, packaging, and commercials), and Let’s Plays (video game play-throughs).
    Credibility of the gaming information source was very important to interviewed parents. They cited both the source of the documentation as well as the reputation of the reporting source to be important factors in establishing credibility.
  • Though a few interviewed parents were in favor of a law, most were not. Those in favor cited it as an extra level of protection or as something they thought was already in place. Those not in favor cited issues with enforcement, the inability for laws to really assist them, as well as a general dislike of having the government interfere with their role as parents.

Specific answers to research questions will be published in a separate post.

First Round of Results from my Dissertation Research

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Here are a few stats from my research on parents and video games copied directly from my dissertation. This post will be the first of several where I talk about my ethnography and the results of my study.

Research Participants
There were 46 total participants in 30 interviews representing 26 households. As defined in Chapter One, a household represents parents who participated alone as well as those who participated together (in the same interview or separately). This singular unit was created to avoid inflation of the numbers where two parents were talking about their shared children and home environments, as that would skew the numbers against those where only one parent participated. Of the participants, 11 were children and 35 were parents. The 35 parents represented 39 qualifying children in total including the 11 who contributed. Of the 35 participating parents, 18 were mothers and 17 were fathers. The parents spanned in ages from 25 to 55. The youngest child participant was 4 and the oldest was 16.

This study afforded opportunities for additional analyses, given the rich qualitative data collected throughout the interviews. Each section below provides this additional information as a way to give context to the research participants and better understand their relationship with video games.

Video Games
Over 200 games were mentioned throughout the course of the interviews, not including the various versions of multiple game franchises. The top three most mentioned games were Minecraft (85% of households), followed by Grand Theft Auto (65%), and then World of Warcraft (42%). Almost two-thirds (64%) of the 39 children played M-rated games and over three-quarters (77%) played T-rated games. None of the children in the study were old enough to purchase M-rated games and only 31% of the 39 children were old enough to purchase T-rated games.

Video Game Devices
Participants played console, computer, and mobile/tablet games equally (88%). Handheld games (58%), followed by web-based (38%), and then educational (35%) rounded out the list. Over three quarters of all 26 households (77%) used some sort of cloud gaming services such as Steam, Origin, Xbox Live, or PlayStation Network. All households downloaded games digitally, whereas only about three-quarters (77%) still bought physical game media.

Video Game Spaces
The majority of game spaces (58%) were publicly shared spaces with the family. Very few (8% of all households) had completely private spaces where stationary devices such as computer towers or consoles were located in children’s rooms. The remaining households (35%) had mixed game spaces due to the use of portable electronics such as laptops, handhelds, and mobile/tablet devices. The majority of households (69%) had some sort of time restrictions placed on video game play; however, less than half of them (39%) considered them to be strict rules.

Parental Assessment
An overwhelming majority of the 26 households (92%) performed some sort of assessment on video games before their children were allowed to play them. Almost all of the 26 households (92%) discussed video game content with their children, and most (85%) stated they knew their children to self-regulate and/or they trusted their children to only play the games of which they knew their parents approved.

Parental Involvement
Almost three-quarters of the 26 households (73%) watched their children play video games and many (69%) played video games with their children. Over half (54%) of the 26 households allowed their children access to the Internet to either play online video games such as massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPG i.e., World of Warcraft) which can only be played online, or to play standard multiplayer video games with others online.

You can read about the key findings here. Answers to my specific research questions will be in a different post.

The Subversiveness of Elvis Presley

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“Communist authorities equally understood Elvis’s subversive manner, even as an Army private.When it was announced that Presley was bound for the U.S. base at Friedberg, the East German Communist Party accused the United States of plotting to undermine the morals of Red youth,’ Karal Ann Marling relates. ‘To show that this act of provocation would not be tolerated, party boss Walter Ulbricht ordered the arrest and imprisonment of fifteen teenagers who marched through the streets of Leipzig in 1959 shouting, ‘Long live Elvis Presley!’” (p. 268)

Cohen, R. D. (1997). The delinquents: Censorship and youth culture in recent US history. History of Education Quarterly, 37(3), 251-270.

So, about that dissertation thing

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Well, being a PhD candidate means one thing and one thing only – now I have to write a dissertation. While yes I knew this was the next stage in the journey, I am not sure I am adequately prepared. I know that seems silly, I mean I have written a Master’s thesis and all. This one just seems (and is!) so much bigger and more daunting. I’m one of those people where the more daunting something seems the harder it is for me to get going on it. However, once I get going I’m usually FULL STEAM AHEAD! 

Now to just figure out how to get going. One thing I’ve tried so far is to buy a few books on the subject of dissertation writing. Since this particular piece of writing is more traditional than say my past ethnographies, I really have to figure out the ins and outs of it and what is expected of me. While I’m sure there is likely some dissertation writing class offered by the university, I am not local and therefore cannot take advantage of that.

So, this means I need to educate myself on it.

Here are the books I bought:

  1. Writing a Successful Thesis or Dissertation: Tips and Strategies for Students in the Social and Behavioral Sciences 
  2. How To Tame Your PhD (Thesis Whisperer Books)
  3. Authoring a PhD: How to Plan, Draft, Write and Finish a Doctoral Thesis or Dissertation (Palgrave Study Skills)

So far book 1 reads more like I textbook than I would like, but I’ll muddle my way through it anyway.

Book 2 seems good, but it has a lot of weird typo issues on the Kindle edition.

Book 3 I have yet to start. I’ll at least finish book 2 first before I try. Book 1 may take a little longer.

My goal is to have these finished by the end of September as I’d like to try to have my first three chapters written by the end of November so that I can defend my topic before the ends of this semester and hopefully get my IRB application submitted and turned in at the start of Spring (if not just before). This has to be done soon in order for me to start my research portion in January and hopefully be finished with the physical research aspect by end of February. Then analyze the rest of spring and into summer when I hope to finish and then start writing by fall to submit my first draft by the end of that semester or by the beginning of Spring 2015.

My goal is to graduate May/15. I’ll have finished my phd in 5 years if I can do that. That doesn’t seem so bad in my book. Especially given that I have a full time job and twins!

Phd Candidate!

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Well, it’s a go! My committee likes me, they really like me! /silly 

Yep! I passed. All that hard work paid off. I have two different dissertation ideas they were happy with. I’ll try running with the first one, if that doesn’t work I’m glad I have a fall back.

This summer I’ll be doing a lit review and this fall I’ll start writing. I hope to be done in 2 years. Seems like such a long time from now, but I know it will go by very quickly.

Now it’s time to pack for Hawaii as we are moving there in about 2 months!

And so it begins…

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This morning I got my list of 8 qualification exam questions of which I am to choose 4 to answer. At first it of course looks overwhelming, but I’d be disappointed if it didn’t. While I can’t discuss the exact content of the questions or my answers, I can discuss the process I go through to answer them and all of the real life stuff I have to deal with at the same time.

Like for example, should I leave the house to do this? Or, should I just barricade myself in my office (where I have all of the sudden noticed the lack of flat space on which to lay out materials), turn up my music, and try to get it done here.

I can say, for those who are interested, my questions focus on things like the interdisciplinarity of info sci, open source, virtual ethnography, and social informatics.

This entire process is wrapped up in a mess of excitement and anxiety. Oh and procrastination of course, but I only have a week to complete four papers that will determine whether or not I actually get to begin my dissertation process, so that really can’t last long. As I look around though, I have to say, my desk could use some tidying before I even try to start this madness…

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