Relationships between Middle and High School Students' Experience of Viewing Media Sports Violence and the Imitation Behavior

The purpose of this study is to investigate the causal relationship between the variables related to media sports violence viewing experience, negative emotion, aggression and violent imitation behavior of middle school students and high school students. The subjects of 240 middle school students and 240 high school students were surveyed for 2 months. Among the collected data, 64 samples judged to have low reliability were excluded from the analysis, and the final 416 data were used. The questionnaire used in this study consisted of four potential variables including experience of watching media sports violence, negative emotion, aggression, and violent imitation behavior. Among the sub-variables of experience of watching media sports violence, exogenous potential variables except frequency, period and time and questions that are endogenous potential variables were composed of a questionnaire of 5-point Likert scale. results of this study were analyzed using the AMOS statistical program, which was used to identify the causal relationship between watching media sports violence and negative emotion, aggression, and violent imitation behavior. There was no significant difference in violent imitation behavior according to school grade. The causal models for media sports violence viewing experience, negative emotions, aggression and violent imitation behavior were found to be appropriate. It was found that there was a significant causal relationship between the viewing experience of sports violence and the violent imitation behavior. Therefore, in order to reduce the imitation behavior of adolescents, it is necessary to be more careful about the production and viewing of sports violence programs at the institutions and homes that produce media.