TY - JOUR T1 - Actions without consequences: Injury-related messages in children's programs AU - Winston F, Woolf K, Jordan A, Bhatia E Y1 - 2000/04/01 N1 - 10.1001/archpedi.154.4.366 JO - Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine SP - 366 EP - 369 VL - 154 IS - 4 N2 - Objective  To characterize children's television programs in terms of their unintentional injury-related messages.Design  Content analysis. Episodes representing a total of 216 unique television programs were coded for the presence of imitable unsafe behaviors without consequences.Setting  A census of all children's programming airing in a northeastern city during the first week of December 1996.Results  Exactly 47.0% of children's programming depicted at least 1 instance of unsafe, imitable behavior without consequences; one third had more than 3 instances. Exactly 51.0% of the programs targeted to school-age children and 33.4% of the programs targeted to preschoolers contained these unsafe behaviors. The majority (56.8%) of children's programs on basic cable television depicted unsafe behavior as compared with 23.1% of programs shown on public television. Cartoon programs depicted the most unsafe behaviors (60.3%), as compared with live-action programs (33.4%) and other genres (23.3%).Conclusions  Children's television programs depict too many unsafe behaviors without consequences. Future work should explore the role of these programs in the development of unsafe behaviors in children. SN - 1072-4710 M3 - doi: 10.1001/archpedi.154.4.366 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/archpedi.154.4.366 ER -