You are a developmental psychologist and you have just been hired as a consultant to a major television production company. The new season is coming and the company wants to know what kinds of TV shows are attracting young viewers to prepare its new shows. For your first work assignment, which you will have to do well in order to keep the job, you have been assigned the task of evaluating a currently popular TV show for children. There is a growing body of research on the role of media and how it affects children. In this assignment we are focusing exclusively on TV. In this assignment, you will be putting your psychology knowledge to use in an applied practical way. Your job in this assignment which is worth 10% of your final grade is to provide a 4- 5 page (maximum) written evaluation of a popular children’s TV program. You will be evaluated on the selection and the evaluation of the show. The assignment should be typed and double spaced. Late assignments will be penalized one mark per day. The first step is to select a show to evaluate. Any show geared to a young audience that can be viewed on TV is suitable. It doesn’t have to appear on a major network and it can be on a service such as Crave or Netflix. It cannot be a movie however or any one time broadcast. It can be a current show or it can be a show that is no longer being produced as long as it is currently being rerun as a series. Some shows have enduring value and they are still talked about even if they go “off air”. Think of Mr Rogers Neighbourhood or Reading Rainbow. Other shows generate a great deal of commercial interest such as Paw Patrol or Peppa Pig. Others still generate news when they are cancelled such as The Friendly Giant and Cailloux. You must watch at least one episode of the show you evaluate. Your written report must include the name of the TV show, when and where you saw it and a plot description. Then, describe the show in detail. The bulk of your report should be an evaluation of the show including its appropriateness for children of the suggested age (a show designed for pre-schoolers should be evaluated against different criteria than a show designed for preteens). You might take into account, for example, the interest value to the target audience, the sex-role stereotyping, and the potential benefits/harms that come from watching (even Sesame Street had its critics), advertising, if any. Be sure to relate your evaluation to class and text material, and don’t be afraid to read ahead to relevant sections of the text. The evaluation you give must be supported by research. Answers based solely on your opinions are not acceptable. Your evaluation may be positive or negative depending on the conclusions you reach. Two to three references are required and are best if they come from professional journals. If you use internet sources, remember that websites are only as good as the authors. Be cautious about accepting as fact research results if they have not been subjected to a process of peer review (as happens for articles published in scientific journals, many of which may be found online). References You must give complete references for the articles you reviewed in a section headed References, at the end of the assignment. This is similar to the References found at the ends of the articles you read. Full references should be given in this section for all the journal articles or books referred to in the body of the report. In the report, when references are cited, always refer to them by the author and the year of publication only, e.g., Smith (2018) has maintained that psychology is an attempt to understand the behaviour of man and lower animals, or Psychology has been defined as a study of the behaviour of man and lower animals (Smith, 2018). Then in the reference section, cite the references in full. References should be arranged in alphabetical order according to the name of the author and should not be numbered nor grouped as books, journals, etc. It is done here just to show you the styles. When several publications of the same author are cited, they should be arranged in chronological order according to the year of publication. The style for books and journals is different, as shown in the examples. I would like for the evaluation to be on the television series “Caillou” if possible.
