Abstract

Objectives: To analyse the injury-related content of
children’s television programmes preferred by boys and by
girls, and to determine whether there are more televised
models of unsafe behaviour in programmes preferred by
boys.
Methods: Parents of 4–11-year-old children identified
their children’s favourite television programmes. Content
analysis of 120 episodes of children’s favourite programmes
was used to quantify safe and risky behaviours,
actual injuries and potential injuries. The gender of the
characters portraying the behaviours was also analysed.
Results: More risky behaviour was portrayed in the boys’
favourite programmes (mean per episode =6.40) than in
the girls’ favourite programmes (mean=2.57). There
were almost twice as many potential injuries (n=310) as
actual injuries (n=157). Potential injuries were portrayed
more often by male characters (mean=1.92) than
female characters (mean=0.98), mostly in the boys’
favourite programmes. Actual injuries occurred more
often to male characters (mean=1.04) than to female
characters (mean=0.27) overall.
Conclusions: Television programmes preferred by this
sample of boys portrayed male role models engaging in
risky behaviours and injuries more often than the
programmes preferred by the sample of girls.