The Annenberg-Robert Wood Johnson Coding of Health and Media Project (CHAMP) is a large multi-year content analysis of health risk behaviors, such as tobacco, alcohol, sex, drugs, violence, mental health, and suicide, as well as positive social measures, including suicide intervention and designated driving, contained in popular U.S. movies, television, music, music video, and internet. The purpose of the project is to track trends in risk behaviors as portrayed in the media over time so the potential positive or negative impact on adults and youth can be evaluated.
What differentiates CHAMP from other content analyses is the time span covered (in some cases dating as far back as 1950), the breadth of content evaluated, and the standardization of questions. Also, CHAMP meets a strong reliability standard, tracks pro-social behavior so potentially positive results from media can also be measured, and is representative because it codes many movies systematically.
It is our hope that the Web site YouthMediaRisk.org (YMR) can make accessible CHAMPS’ methods and findings to the academic and policymaking communities. As of summer 2008, the project continues to code its television phase that includes popular dramas since the 1950s. The project is also planning for its music coding phase of top-selling songs since the 1950s.
Our method of summarizing and analyzing media messages is called content analysis, a methodology established in the communications field that, as a requisite of the scientific method, is able to be replicated by others. (See Neuendorf 2002 and Krippendorff 2004). Content analysis by definition requires more than one coder and methods for determining reliability and validity. The field is relatively new and growing. Both Neuendorf’s* and Krippendorff’s† books are excellent resources for anyone interested in conducting or understanding content analyses, especially what is known about reliability (the measure of coders’ consistent use of shared definitions that allow them to code media content in a similar fashion) and validity standards. (There are many types of validity including face, construct etc.) This site features a link to a paper by Dr. Neuendorf on reliability as well as her reliability program PRAM. We also post a paper on understanding validity by Dr. W. James Potter, a veteran of the National Television Violence Study.
A more detailed explanation of the project can be found on the site in a paper by Bruce Hardy, et al. We hope you find these resources useful.
Resources:
 |
| Here are some dramatic U.S. movie trends from our CHAMP data. More information can be found in The Changing Portrayal of Adolescents in the Media since 1950 (Oxford, 2008). This Amazon.com link takes you to it. More information about the book can be found here. |
*Neuendorf, K. A.(2002). The Content Analysis Guidebook. Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage Press.
†Krippendorff, K. (2004). Content Analysis: An Introduction to Its Methodology (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage Press.
Krippendorff, K. A. (2009). The Content Analysis Reader. Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage Press.