DVD Talk Forum - The results of my movie violence survey

My research write-up is due this week, so I have spent the last hour recording the results of the survey questions I asked in
This Thread. To get more results, I posted the survey on two other forums; Home Theater Forum, and DVDFile, and I have combined all the results here. You may notice that the totals for each question are not exactly the same. The reason is that a few users did not answer all the questions. (or did not answer them all seriously). Also, I chose to throw out a few of the questions, and I will explain why later.

One thing I feel I should have done differently is to give set answers from which to choose, instead of leaving the questions completely open. This made it somewhat difficult to record the results. Many people would answer a question by saying something like "Yes, BUT..." Or "Well, it really depends..." I did my best to match those types of replies with an appropriate, simpler answer.

Ok, onto the results. The number of replies for each answer is in bold.

1. What is your age?

15-19 - 15
20-24 - 16
25-29 – 16
30-34 - 12
35-39 - 3

2. What is your sex?

Male - 59
Female - 4

3. What is your race?

White - 45
Black - 5
Asian - 5
Hispanic - 3
other - 4

4. What percentage of the movies you watched in the last month was violent? (Estimate if necessary)

0-24% - 7
25-49% - 11
50-74% - 20
75-100% -23

5. What percentage of the movies you watched in the last year was violent?

0-24% - 3
25-49% - 12
50-74% - 21
75-100% - 24

6. What percentage of movies you own is violent?

0-24% - 6
25-49% - 13
50-74% -17
75-100% -24

7. If you had the choice, would you rather watch a violent or non- violent movie (if no other deciding factors came into play)

violent - 26
non-violent - 10
not a factor/no opinion - 24
You guys thought WAY too far into this question:)

8. When you witness on-screen violence, what is your immediate reaction?

I threw this question out simply because there is no way I could measure your replies.

9. Do you feel any more aggressive immediately after viewing a violent movie?

Yes - 0
No - 52
Sometimes/maybe/depends - 10

10. How likely are you to imitate a violent act you saw in a movie? Use a scale of 1-10, 1 being extremely unlikely, 10 being extremely likely.

1- 45
2- 8
3- 4
4- 0
5- 0
6- 0
7- 1
8- 0
9- 0
10-0

11. From your experience, do you believe that movies have the ability to make a person act out more aggressively than he or she otherwise would?

Yes - 11
No - 38
Sometimes/maybe/depends - 12

12. Have you ever committed a violent act?

I threw this one out because I didn't clearly define what a "violent act" is. The results were not consistant, and were therefore inaccurate.

13. Do you ever see violence on the news and are reminded of a movie with a similar scenario?

yes - 32
no - 14
sometimes/rarely – 13

14. Do you believe that film directors base elements of their films (plot, characters etc) on real life events?

Yes - 44
No - 1
Sometimes/maybe/depends - 15

15. If you answered "yes" to #14, do you believe that those real life events are more likely to be incorporated into a film if they are violent in nature?

I threw this one out because I screwed up the question initially

So there it is. As far as what these statistics tell us about movie violence, well, I'll let you guys make your own conclusions. Thanks again for participating!