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Encouraging Heroes. You can be one too.

Hello Heroes! Below please read a letter from Dan Li, who is hoping we’ll help her with a study regarding television viewing habits of children between 0 and 8 years old. I did check it out a bit, and Dan is a real person pursuing a Doctoral degree at Northwestern University under the direction of Professor Ellen Wartella. If you don’t mind participating, it’ll help Dan considerably. Thanks!

Dear parent,

My name is Dan Li, and I’m a Ph.D. student in the Department of Communication Studies at Northwestern University. I’m conducting a research project about how American parents guide their young children’s TV viewing. This research involves an online survey, and I would like to invite you to participate.

You can take part only if you live in the United States, are at least 18 years old, and have at least one child between 0 and 8 years old. The survey is online, and would take about 20 – 30 minutes to finish. All of your answers will be completely confidential; responses can’t be linked to an individual completing the survey.

Please click the link below to take the survey.
http://survey.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_bDDRC7JZ2k7OKby&site=ep

If you have any questions or concerns, you can contact me at dan-li@northwestern.edu. Questions about your rights as a research subject may be directed to the Office for the Protection of Research Subjects at Northwestern Institutional Review Board at (312) 503-9338. The IRB number for this study is STU00048154, and the title is “Parental active mediation of young children’s television viewing: An application of the theory of planned behavior.”

Thank you very much!

Dan Li
Ph.D Candidate
Media, Technology, and Society
School of Communication
Northwestern University

P.P.S. If you have taken the survey (and you are very welcome to do so!) and noticed some seemingly repetitive questions, I would like to offer a few explanations. First, we have to use multiple questions measuring various aspects of a behavior or attitude to get a reliable assessment. That’s why participants might notice some similar questions. Secondly, the questionnaire is a rigorous application of the Theory of Planned Behavior and we have to include questions deemed necessary by the theory. Thirdly, we understand how busy parents of young children are and have tried to lighten their burden by all means. For example, we designed a complex survey flow so that parents wouldn’t even have to see questions we consider irrelevant for them based on their answers to previous questions. In short, we have spent a large amount of time and energy polishing the survey and please believe that there is reason we designed every question the way it is now.

Image courtesy of tikilab via Creative Commons license, some rights reserved.