Violent video games and violent media contents as correlates of aggressive behaviour among in-school adolescents in onitsha education zone of anambra state, nigeria.

Abstract

The population of this study comprised of 34472 in-school adolescents in all the 22 public secondary schools in Onitsha Education Zone of Anambra State The participants of this study were 603 SSII in-school adolescents who met the study’s inclusion criteria determined through a pre-survey. Six (6) research questions and six (6) hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. The study adopted correlational design. Three questionnaire instruments were developed by the researcher and used for data collection in the study.

The instruments were face-validated by three experts and the reliability coefficients established through Cronbach’s alpha method. The Violent Video Games Questionnaire (VVGQ yielded a reliability coefficient of 0.82, the Violent Media Contents Questionnaire (VMCQ yielded a reliability coefficient of 0.88, and the In-School Adolescents’ Aggressive Behaviour Questionnaire (IAABQ) yielded a reliability coefficient of 0.83.

The research questions in the study were answered using mean, standard deviation, Pearson product moment correlation, partial correlation statistics and chart, while regression statistics was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 probability level. The results showed that the relationship between playing violent video games, viewing violent media contents and aggressive behaviour among the in-school adolescents is very high.

The results further showed that the extent to which gender mediates the relationship between playing violent video games, viewing violent media contents and aggressive behaviour among in-school adolescents is very high; and the extent to which parental mediation moderates the relationship between playing violent video games, viewing violent media contents and aggressive behaviour among in-school adolescents is also very high.