The effects of sex, age, and sex-role attitudes of television newscaster credibility : an experimental study

A post-test only, comparative treatments laboratory research design was employed to test the hypotheses derived from source credibility, sex-role attitude, and television newscaster research. control for possible bias from the content of the newscast message and personal traits of the newscasters, a pretest was given to a separate, but similar, group of 25 subjects. From the pretest, four messages, which were judged interesting or neutral, and eight newscasters, who were judged to be similar in attractiveness and professional speaking abilities, were selected for the experiment.

The experimental subjects were 92 students from The University of Tennessee Evening School who were randomized into four treatment groups according to sex and age. Each group was shown videocassette taped newscasts of either two young male, two mature male, two young female, or two mature female newscasters. The four newscast messages were identical for each treatment group.

The subjects noted their perceptions of newscaster credibility on a seven-interval, semantic differential scale. The message impact was measured on a five-interval Likert-type scale. Viewer sex-role attitudes were measured on a four-interval Likert-type scale. The t-test of significance and multiple regression techniques were used to analyze the influence of the independent variables on the dependent variable, credibility.

Major findings were that there was no significant difference in credibility ratings between male and female newscasters or between young and mature newscasters. However, when the variables sex and age of the newscaster were examined together, mature male newscasters were perceived as significantly more credible than mature female and young male newscasters, but not young female newscasters.

In addition, there was no significant relationship between the sex, age, and sex-role attitudes of television viewers and credibility of male and female or young and mature newscasters. Secondary analysis showed that viewers did not perceive newscasters of the same sex or age as significantly more or less credible than other sex-age categories of newscasters, with the exception of young female viewers, who perceived mature male newscasters as significantly more credible than young male newscasters.

The study used a sample population of adult television viewers who were above average in education and generally professionally employed. Additional research is needed using a random sample of general television news audiences and target segments of these audiences. Newscaster delivery, articulateness, voice, diction, eye contact, appearance, and appeal also should be examined. Longitudinal studies on the acceptance of women, particularly nature women, as television newscasters are warrented. This study has practical application to television news directors and newscasters and contributes to existing research on the credibility of television newscasters.