Now Andrew Eisen asked some questions about the study in gamepolitics.com and I can’t help but to try to answer them. The best practice of getting the right answers is to e-mail the authors themselves, the contact info should be on the first page.
Abstract
This article presents conceptual and empiricalanalyses of several of the ‘‘best practices’’ of learning and instruction, and demonstrates how violent video games use them effectively to motivate learners to persevere in acquiring and mastering a number of skills, to navigate through complex problems and changing environments, and to experiment with different identities until success is achieved. These educational principles allow for the generation of several testable hypotheses, two of which are tested with samples of 430 elementary school children (mean age 10 years), 607 young adolescents (mean age 14 years), and 1,441 older adolescents (mean age 19 years). Participants were surveyed about their video game habits and their aggressive cognitions and behaviors.
The first hypothesis is based on the principle that curricula that teach the same underlying concepts across contexts should have the highest transfer. Therefore, students who play multiple violent video games should be more likely to learn aggressive cognitions and behaviors than those who play fewer.
The second hypothesis is based on the principle that long-term learning is improved the more practice is distributed across time. Therefore, students who play violent video games more frequently across time should be more likely to learn aggressive cognitions and behaviors than those who play the same types of games for equivalent amounts of time but less frequently. Both hypotheses were supported. We conclude by describing what educators can learn from the successful instructional and curriculum design features of video games.
Now on to the questions:
“Why was a second aggression sample only done with the elementary school kids?”
Can’t really answer right away, need time. Maybe after mid-december when i’m done with undergrad thesis proposal.
“How significant was the aggression increase? I look at the table in the study and I have to wonder what the difference between a .33 and .44 overall physical aggression index is.” The table he’s refering is”Table 1″
Now I might be able to answer that. Now the table only show the raw correlational data, you can’t compare correlational scores to predict something. so they used logisitic regression (see in wikipedia).
Now speaking of only the 3-5th graders, they’re trying to predict variables measured at time 1 to time 2 ( measures take on november-February and measures taken April-May). So they controlled several variables from being a factor into their calculation: sex, race, age, lag(?), weekly amounts of video game play, and time 1 hostile attribution bias.
Therefore, figure 1 is what needs to look at, but I haven’t been taught on how to read logistical regressions. so i’m just reading from the text. So controlling all these variables, they found that playing multiple violent video games influence kids concept of aggression as a normal thing and will see things in aggressive terms, so with an aggressive cognition, which would result in more aggressive behaviours. Unfortunately, I do know they have a significant effect, but how large is the effect? Well, i don’t know. Maybe it’s small like Patrick Markey said?
Update(11/02/08): I’ve finally read the article, see my comments after the break. Read the rest of this entry »