Video Game Violence and Aggression
Design a quasi or a true experimental study, investigating the impact of the independent variable on the dependent variable.
Address the following in 500-750 words:
Design a quasi study to investigate the variables
** independent variable (amount of time spent playing video games)
** dependent variable is aggression
What is the hypothesis?
**Hypothesis: It is predicted that there is not a correlation between the amount of time a person spends playing video games and behaving in an aggressive manner (Please adjust the hypothesis in specific to the levels in the quasi)
Describe the types of hypotheses with respect to testing. What does the experimental method allow that the correlation design does not?
Identify the independent variable. Identify the dependent variable.
Describe how the group will define operationally and measure the variables.
Describe how the group will obtain a random sample of participants.
Discuss how the group will ensure the study has high internal validity. Will the subjects be assigned randomly to the groups? Why or why not.
Are there any ethical concerns about the treatment of participants emerging from the experiment?
Consider the data presented, would you use t or F score? Why? include the appropriate effect size.
Submit an SPSS output for the quasi or true experimental study
Sample Answer
Video Games and Aggressive Behavior
Introduction
Aggression is a behavior that is intended to cause harm to another person (Zhang, Cao & Tian, 2021). Therefore, aggressive behavior can cause emotional or physical harm to other individuals, and it ranges from verbal to physical abuse or even harms personal property. Several studies have identified that violent gaming significantly causes aggressive behaviors in people (Zhang. Cao, & Tian, 2021; Exelmans et al., 2015). The researchers postulated that violent video games predict aggression since they are causally associated. Another study on meta-analysis revealed that violent video games have significant aggressive behaviors, thoughts and affect in people (Anderson et al., 2010). According to Bushman (1998), violent video games activate aggression and thus increases aggressive behaviors in children. In adolescence, young people consume video games at a higher rate where it is at its peak. Most of the American youth between the ages of 8 to 18 years use approximately 1.15 hours in praying videogames per day. The average time spent playing video games has been increasing over the decade from 24 minutes per day in 1999 to 49 minutes in 2004 and about 73 minutes in 2009 (Rideout, Foehr, & Roberts, 2010). In Europe, previous studies indicated that adolescents from Belgian used an average of 1.2 hours in playing video games per day (Vandercammen & Vandenbrande, 2011), while in Dutch, they used an average of 1.61 hours per day (Lemmens, Valkenburg, & Peter, 2011; Anderson and Groves (2013) used General Aggression Model (GAM) to describe the short and long-term effects of media violence exposure on aggressive behaviors. In the long run, GAM articulates that chronic exposure to aggression-associated stimuli such as violent video would develop more aggressive behaviors in an individual. The aggressive personality formulates when an individual changes their attitudes and beliefs and there about other people behaviors.
Although existing literature suggested that playing violent video games increases aggressive behavior, little is known on how violent video games cause aggressive behaviors among children. In this regard, the current study seeks to examine the effect of violent video games on aggression behaviors. The study will involve all adults 18 years and above. The study will seek to address the following hypothesis:
H1: There is a causal relationship between violent video games and aggressive behaviors.
Methods
The researcher used correlational research, which is a type of quasi-experimental design, to gather quantitative data in addressing the research question. The study used a random sample of participants. The random sample of 38 individuals was obtained from a list of acquaintances, friends, and family of each of the researchers using a simple random sampling method. The survey was distributed using google forms to the selected sample. The researcher maintained anonymity by ensuring no personal information was obtained during the survey. The data were analyzed using correlation and regression analysis using SPSS version 23. The independent variable was the type of video game, and the dependent variable was aggressive behavior scores. Aggressive behaviors were measured with scores from 0 to100 where low scores indicate low aggression and high scores suggest high aggressive behaviors.
Results
Table 1: Descriptive Statistics
| Violent Video game | Non-violent Video game | |
| Mean | 58.37 | 43.11 |
| Median | 69 | 30.5 |
| Standard Deviation | 29.93 | 33.10 |
| Range | 92 | 97 |
| Minimum | 4 | 3 |
| Maximum | 96 | 100 |
| n | 19 | 18 |
The aggressive scores among those who played a violent video game (M=58.37, SD=29.9) was on average higher than those who played a non-violent video game (M = 43.11, SD = 33.1). The maximum score for a violent video game was 96, and a minimum of 4 with a range of 92, while a non-violent video game has a maximum aggressive score of 100 and a minimum of 3 with a range of 97. This suggested that the aggressive score for a non-violent video game was widely spread out than that for a violent video game. The data in a violent video game was negatively skewed since the median is greater than the mean. Besides, the non-violent video game was positively skewed since the mean was greater than the median. For skewed data, the median is the most appropriate measure of central tendency to apply (Table 1).
Table 2: Correlation Analysis
| Violent Video game | Non-violent Video game | |
| Violent Video game | 1 | |
| Non-violent Video game | 0.4997 | 1 |
The correlation analysis depicted on table 2 above indicate that there is moderate strong positive correlation between violent video game and non-violent video game (r = 0.4997). This suggested that non-violent video score are associated with violent video game.
Table 3: Regression Analysis
| Multiple R | 0.241478 | ||||
| R Square | 0.058312 | ||||
| Adjusted R Square | 0.031406 | ||||
| Standard Error | 31.50882 | ||||
| Observations | 37 | ||||
| ANOVA | |||||
| df | SS | MS | F | Significance F | |
| Regression | 1 | 2151.693 | 2151.693 | 2.167285 | 0.149911 |
| Residual | 35 | 34748.2 | 992.8057 | ||
| Total | 36 | 36899.89 | |||
| Coefficients | Standard Error | t Stat | P-value | ||
| Intercept | 27.8538 | 16.51897 | 1.68617 | 0.100659 | |
| Type of Video game | 15.25731 | 10.36382 | 1.47217 | 0.149911 |
Regression analysis depicted in table 3 above indicates that the r-square value (0.06) suggested that the data do not satisfy the model well. The investigation revealed that the model was not significant (F = 2.167, p = 0.1499). The regression coefficient was insignificant different from zero (p = 0.1499. This suggested that the type of video game did not have a significant impact on aggressive behaviors. The analysis revealed that aggressive behaviors for a violent video game were not significantly different from those for a non-violent video game.
