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5) Do children who watch public television behave differently?
The 1998 Roper Youth Report found that young viewers of PBS children's programming are more likely to read and take part in family activities than non-viewers, even though both viewers and non-viewers share the same demographics in terms of household income, parents' education, ethnicity, family composition and public school attendance.
Specifically, the children surveyed were more likely to indicate a greater preference for reading non-school books, newspaper or going to the library than young non-PBS viewers. They were also more likely to be frequent readers and to belong to a reading group outside of school.
PBS kid viewers were also more active in sports, more likely to belong to groups outside of school and more interested in science, crafts, cooking, computers, playing a musical instruments and doing arts projects in a given week.
These findings were based on interviews with 1,100 children between the ages of six and 17 years.
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