continued: "The World in the Screen: The Impact of Character Representativeness, Society Variability, and Presentation on Audiences' Conceptualization of Cross-cultural Media Images" by Alice Hall
1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5
References
Appendix / Tables

Measures
Character representativeness. Character representativeness is the degree to which the attributes of character are felt to be shared by others within the social group with which the character is identified. Participants were asked to evaluate the two characters with the most screen time. The order in which the characters were evaluated was randomized across participants. They were asked to think of men or women, as appropriate, of a particular character's "age and culture." Participants then asked to indicate on a seven-point scale "how typical or atypical [the character] is of this group." There was a marked neutral point at four. The participants were also asked to indicate, on a seven-point scale, their agreement or disagreement with the statement that the character was "very different from other men/women of his/her age and culture" and that "Many men/women of [the character's] age and culture would behave like he/she did if they were in his/her situation." These questions were embedded in a series of items asking participants to evaluate the likableness, realism, and humorousness of the characters and the degree to which they identified with them. These questions served as controls and helped mask the intent of the study. The representativeness items were re-coded for direction and averaged to create a single index. The reliability of the scale, including both characters in the film segments, was .739 for the US film and .623 for the Taiwanese film.

Application of character attributes to society perceptions. When the participants evaluated the films' societies, they completed a series of seven-point scales describing the "average" person of the society. The scales were marked with an attribute at one end and the opposite of the attribute at the other. There was a labeled, neutral mid-point. An attempt was made to include attributes found in previous research (e.g., Kippax and Brigden, 1977; Lalonde and Gardner, 1989; Haslam, Oakes, Turner, and McGarty, 1995) to characterize the four societies in the study as well as attributes that had been used by pre-test participants to describe the film characters. The attributes used in these measures were, polite/impolite, traditional/modern, unambitious/ambitious, impulsive/self-controlled, confident/unconfident, practical/idealistic, talkative/quiet, group-oriented/individualistic, happy-go-lucky/serious, shy/friendly. The order of the attributes was randomly determined, but was the same for all participants.

After evaluating the overall "average person," participants were asked to evaluate the average person within four subgroups for each society. The subgroups were young men (age 17-34), young women, mature men (age 35-68), and mature women. The order of the subgroups was randomly determined, but was the same for all participants.

Perceived variability of the films' source societies. Perceived variability was evaluated through three measures. The first measure, the range measure, was perhaps the simplest to administer and to calculate. Participants were presented with four unnumbered scales marked with attributes found by previous cross-cultural research to vary systematically across societies--self-sufficiency, reservedness, caution, and competitiveness. They were asked to indicate "where the average person in [the place] would be on each of the following attributes with an X." Then, they were to "indicate with two slashes (/) where the two most extreme people in [the place] would be, that is, the person who shows the characteristic most strongly and the person who shows the characteristic least strongly." An example was provided.

The perceived range of each attribute was determined by measuring the distance, in millimeters, between the marks representing lowest and highest person. The scale could vary from .1, for those who placed the maximum and minimum of the population's distribution .1 millimeter apart, to 15.2, for those who marked the maximum and minimum at the extreme ends of the scale. Range scores were averaged across attributes to arrive at a single measure for each evaluated society. This measure has been used successfully in a variety of studies including Park and Judd (1990), Judd, Park, Ryan, Bauer, and Kraus, (1995), and Ryan, Judd and Park (1996). The reliability across attributes for the range measure was .659 for those evaluating the United States and .806 for those evaluating Taiwan.

Perceptions of the variability within the source societies were also evaluated by two measures that were constructed from a single set of four scales, which were developed by Park and Judd (1990) from a measure created by Linville, Salovey, and Fischer (1986). Each of the scales asked participants to evaluate the target society on a different attribute. The attributes used in the scales were selected because they had been established by previous cross-cultural research distinguish cultural groups. These attributes are adventurous/unadventurous, competitive/collaborative, independent/dependent, and outgoing/reserved. Participants were provided with stick-on dots in three sizes and presented with four six-value scales. The values of the scales were labeled to indicate a range of degrees to which an individual might posses the attribute. For example, in reference to the "adventurousness scale," one end was labeled "adventurous." The next values were labeled "moderately adventurous," "slightly adventurous," "slightly unadventurous," and "moderately unadventurous." The other end was labeled "very unadventurous."

Participants were presented with the scales and a supply of circular stickers. They were asked to think of a particular group as a whole. They were asked to "estimate the proportion of people from [the place] who fall into each level of the characteristics listed below". If they thought a lot of people within the group occupied a particular position on the scale, they were asked to mark it with a large sticker. If they thought a moderate number of people occupied a particular position on the scale, they were to mark it with a medium sticker. If they thought a small number of people occupied a particular position on the scale, they were to mark it with a small sticker. If they thought no one, or almost no one, occupied the position, they were asked to leave the value blank. An example was provided.

From these scales two measures, the probability of differentiation and perceived variability, were calculated. Probability of differentiation is the probability "that two randomly chosen group members will be perceived to differ in terms of the attribute" (Linville, et al., 1986, p. 167). Perceived variability is the extent to which category members are viewed as widely dispersed about the mean of the attribute.

To calculate the probability of differentiation, each value on the scale is initially considered a separate variable. Each possible response is coded as a numerical value. The absence of a dot is coded as zero, the smallest dot as one, the medium dot as two, and the largest dot as three. The scores of the six scale values are summed. Then the score of each scale value is divided by the sum to arrive at the proportion of the category members perceived to be described by each level of the attribute (pi). Probability of differentiation for each attribute is calculated according the following formula:
Probability of Differentiation = 1 - S i=1,6 pi2

The scores of the four different attributes are averaged to create a single score for each society. The reliabilities for these items are .962 for those evaluating the US, and .934 for those evaluating Taiwan.

To calculate perceived variability, each position on the scale was assigned a scale value of one to six. For example, in reference to the scale for adventurousness, the "very adventurous" position was assigned a scale value of six, "moderately adventurous" was assigned a scale value of five, and so forth down to "very unadventurous," which was assigned a scale value of one. The means (M) of the perceived distributions were calculated for each scale through the following formula:
M= S i=1,6 pi Xi

X is the scale value and p is the subjectively perceived proportion of category members described by level i of the attribute. Perceived variation for each attribute was calculated according to the following formula:
Perceived Variability = S i=1,6 pi(X i - M)2

The scores of the four different attributes were averaged into single score for each society.

The original scales Linville and her colleagues developed asked participants to write the proportion of the members of the group who would fall into each of the six values rather than using the stick-on dots to indicate these proportions. These scales have been used in a variety of studies (e.g., Linville, Fischer, and Salovey, 1989; Judd and Park, 1990; Lee and Ottati, 1995; Thompson, Kohles, Otsuki, and Kent, 1997). Although these scales seem to capture perceived dispersion, they are awkward and time consuming to complete. Park and Judd's (1990) modification of this measure makes the procedure easier for the participants and therefore more appropriate for inclusion within a lengthy questionnaire, while providing results that are consistent with those of the original measure. The reliabilities of these items for those evaluating the US were .723 and .841 for those evaluating Taiwan.

Manipulation checks and priming summary evaluation. At the end of the questionnaire, participants were asked "when they were first aware of when the film was made?" Participants circled one of four options that ranged from 1 "before seeing the clip" to 4 "never."

After evaluating the film, participants were asked to complete were two seven-point scales evaluating the "summary you read before you saw the film." "Based on what you've seen of the film so far" they were asked, "how accurate do you think the summary is? That is, do you think the summary is correct in its evaluation of the film?" The ends of the scale were marked "not at all accurate"(1) and "very accurate" (7). Then, participants were asked to evaluate how relevant they thought the summary was. "That is, [did they] think the summary discusses the most important things about the film, or does it discuss things that were relatively unimportant?" The ends of the scale were marked "not at all relevant" (1) and "very relevant" (7). continued

Next page: Results

References
Appendix / Tables