Viewing the viewers: Ten video cases of children's television viewing behaviors

Abstract

This paper examines measures of children's television viewing. We performed ten video case studies to replicate and extend work addressing “in what ways do parent and child estimates and descriptions of television viewing resemble those observed using in‐home videotape observations?” Mothers’ general estimates were more accurate than children's estimates. In contrast, children's perceptions of behaviors while viewing were more accurate than their mothers. Lastly, we found that in‐home videotape observation has substantial limitations.