Study: TV can be powerful, healthful conversation starter

After a time, television characters start to feel like friends. They're there through thick and thin, only a remote's click away from unconditional support and vicarious conversations. And, according to a new study, it's because of them that some individuals have become more open with their sexual health.

A recent study from Ohio State University, Columbus, shows that an episode of "Sex and the City" helped prompt participants to be more frank about their sexual health with their partners, friends and doctors.

"One of the powerful things about entertainment programming is that it can get people talking about important issues that they might not otherwise talk about," Emily Moyer-Guse says.

Moyer- Guse, the assistant professor of communication at Ohio State University, conducted the research with two graduate students, Adrienne Chung and Parul Jain. The study involved 243 college students, both male and female, with an average age of about 20.

The students were divided into three groups, each group viewing different material. The first group watched the episode "Are We Sluts?" where characters Miranda and Samantha have discussions with friends and partners about Chlamydia and HIV. The second group saw the same episode, but the scenes with the discussions about the sexually transmitted diseases were eliminated. The third group saw an entirely different episode of the show, "Running With Scissors," with no conversation about sexual health whatsoever.

Roughly 46 percent of those who viewed the first version admitted in a follow-up questionnaire two weeks later that they had opened up to their romantic partners about the subject. Only 21 percent who saw the second version and 15 percent who saw the different episode did the same.

"That's a pretty substantial behavioral effect after watching just one episode of a TV show," Moyer-Guse says.

Just witnessing an episode of television isn't enough to fully motivate an audience member to respond proactively, however. The two-week follow-up questionnaire showed that it was mostly people who felt an emotional connection to the characters who started a conversation about it later. The same individuals were also less likely to question the plausibility of the episode and its characters.

Moyer- Guse says the inspiration for the study came from the taboo nature of sexual health conversations, as well as the potential for media narratives to model these conversations for viewers.

"Being able to measure actual behavior after watching, rather than simply behavioral intentions or attitudes, was something we were pleased to do with this study," she says.