Group Project #4: In-Class Exercise
Instructions: As you answer these questions, try to think about how you would explain things to
a friend or peer. Don’t just copy/paste text from the article; instead, try to rephrase things in
your own words. If you don’t understand something in your article, ask your team members or
me for help.
Your Name: Miranda Grace Cartwright
The title & authors of your article: Longitudinal Associations Between Screen Time and
Children’s Language, Early Educational Skills, and Peer Social Functioning
Megan Gath, John Horwood, Et Al.
Is this article relevant to a question or interest you had about this topic? What claim (that
you described in your personal reflection or popular media post) is this article
exploring/most relevant to? Briefly explain.
The claim I made is that the screen time especially for younger children such as (0-2 years old)
should not have lots of exposure to screen time. And those who are exposed to screen time early
we more likely to develop differently than those who have less exposure. And this article is
coherent with the fact that the findings correlate with the children as they develop over time.
What is the article’s main research question? (Keep it broad)
I would say that the main question they are trying to tackle is how much the availability of
screens effects the children as they develop
Who participated in the study?
· Number of participants: 6,131 children
· Age of participants: born between 2009 and 2010 from ranges (0-8 yrs)
· Was the sample WEIRD? I believe so, the study was done in New Zealand
What did the authors do to test their research question? Summarize their methods (what they
did). Depending on the type of article, this could include:
· What was the independent variable(s)? (The variable(s) the experimenters manipulated;
or, the variable(s) the experimenters were using to predict some kind of outcome).
How much screen time if any did the children have as they were growing up?
They interviewed the parents and asked them certain questions based off of the different age
ranges, if the child spent more time on screens they were likely to show signs of what they
were looking for as indicators for their study
· What was the dependent variable? (The variable the experimenters were trying to
predict; the outcome variable; in an experiment, the variable that the experimenters did not
directly control/manipulate.)
The types of families
· Participant groups (for example, children who were breastfed versus children who were
formula fed; children randomly assigned to a treatment group versus a control group)
Those who had increased screen time and those who didn’t
· Experimental protocol (if the researchers had the participants do some kind of task, test,
or procedure, what was it?)
The participants were observed and the parents were interviewed about their screen use
· How did the researchers measure the independent and dependent variables?
They measured both the amount of screen time and their development are measured by the
parents of the participants were interviewed whether they were exposed to screens directly or
indirectly.
What did the researchers find out?
Here, summarize the results that are most relevant to the main research question (and only the
results that are most relevant). You don’t need to include specific statistical or numerical data.
· Did the researchers include a graph or table that shows this result? If so, paste it here. How
would you explain the figure to a friend without a science background?
The results show that the participants with increased screen times have difficulty with language,
peer problems, and educational ability. For instance, the children with 6 plus hours have more
difficulty they find in the problems above.
What do you think are the main strengths and weaknesses of the study?
The strengths of the study is that they get their findings longitudinally which is helpful because it
doesn’t just get span of time during the childs life but during many important life stages during
their childhood to get an accurate representation of how screen time affects them over time.
The weakness is that there were that there were at least 1,000 who were not assessed and also
another limitation is that it was only conducted in New Zealand when I feel that there can be a
more
Do the findings of the article support or challenge the claim you were exploring?
They do support the claim I made that children with increased screen time are more likely to be
affected by it such as peer problems, language, and educational ability.
How does this article contribute to your understanding of your group's topic?
This study helps to show the effects of screen time across the different age ranges of childhood
What don't we know, still? What future research is needed?
Future research could be explored that although there was a broad spectrum of different cultural
backgrounds across New Zealand I feel that if there was more of a broad spectrum of people
across the globe the get an even better perspective of how screen time effects those with varying
different degrees of screen time across the childhood ages affect their abilities in different times
