Media Literacy as a Violence-Prevention Strategy: A Pilot Evaluation

Youth violence is a major unresolved public health problem in the United States and media exposure to violence is a synergistic source of this national problem. One media literacy curriculum designed specifically to address this issue is Beyond Blame: Challenging Violence in the Media. The purpose of this pilot study was to examine the curriculum's feasibility as a full-scale intervention. Intervention and control groups were similar with respect to knowledge of the Beyond Blame curriculum at baseline. Intervention students scored much higher on the posttest compared with the control students. The majority (90.2%) of the intervention students reported a significant increase in pre- to posttest score compared with only 18.8% of the control students (p .0001). The magnitude of the score increase for intervention students was much greater than those in the control group. Several intervention students (N = 49; 19.9%) improved their score by 12 or more points compared with the control students who showed only a 1-to 7-point score increase (N = 3; 18.8%; p .0001). The pre-and posttest scores were similar for males and females. Three of the six intervention classrooms scored higher on both the pretest and posttest compared with the other three classrooms
Author: 
Webb,Theresa
Martin,Kathryn
Afifi,Abdelmonem A.
Kraus,Jess
Notes: 
10.1177/1524839908328998
Reprint Status: 
NOT IN FILE
Start Page: 
1524839908328998
Journal/Periodical Name: 
Health Promotion Practice
Volume: 
online
Abstract: 
The purpose of the pilot study was to evaluate the feasibility of doing a full-scale evaluation of the effectiveness of Beyond Blame, an 8 lesson curriculum that addressed youth violence. In 2005, 3 middle schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District participated in the intervention and 1 school was the control. A majority of the students were Hispanic (61.8%). Results indicated that intervention group increased knowledge of media violence but no significant changes were documented in attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs. Concerns about the literacy level of curriculum were reported.
Topic Areas: 
adolescent/high school, curriculum, media/internet
Reference Type: 
JOUR
Reference ID: 
2608
Publication Date: 
2009/01/31