Effects of media violence use in adolescence: A longitudinal study with an experimental intervention

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The requested funding for a replacement to relieve the applicant from teaching and administrative duties for a period of 12 months is designed to aid the completion of the project Effects of media violence use in adolescence: A longitudinal study with an experimental intervention that has been funded by the DFG since 2007. The extensive data base of five data waves at yearly intervals provides the possibility of addressing a number of theoretical and methodological questions regarding the development of aggressive behavior in adolescence that go beyond the core research questions specified for the project. To fully exploit this potential and publish the findings in a timely fashion, it is necessary for the applicant to be relieved from regular teaching and administrative duties for the completion of these analyses. The project has generated data for the longitudinal analysis from a sample of 1,750 participants from 96 school classes who were in Grade 7 or 8 at the beginning of the project and took part in at least two of the five measurements. The proposed program of work for the replacement period is directed at three major tasks: (1) The multi-level analysis of the relation between media violence use and aggression over time, seeking to demonstrate interactions between the covariation of media violence use and aggression at the individual level, and patterns of media violence use and aggression at the class level. Such multi-level analyses are currently not available in the international research on media violence and aggression. (2) The analysis of trajectories of aggressive behavior over time in terms of identifying persisting or desisting patterns of aggressive behavior as well as their predictors, using state-of-the-art latent growth curve modeling analyses. Here, the aim is to identify mediating processes that may contribute to the persistence or increase of aggressive behavior patterns in the course of adolescence. (3) The methodological analysis of different operationalizations of media violence use and their divergent or convergent outcomes in relation to aggressive behavior. The present data set provides the opportunity to create indices of media violence use based on different measures of frequency of use and of violent content ratings. Examining the extent to which these different indices show convergent or different relations with aggressive behavior as well as the proposed mediating variables over time can make a significant contribution to the understanding of the role of method variance in interpreting the links between media violence use and aggression in the current research literature.