Chapter 4 Sexual Content in Soap Operas - Leicester Research ...

Sex and Sexuality: A Content Analysis of Soap Operas
well as the amount of such messages that programmes contain. Both talk about sex
and the depiction of sexually related behaviours are now found in a majority of
programmes during the ―Family Hour‖ time frame. The amount of sexual
interactions overall in 1996 was up 118% since 1986 and 270% since 1976.‘ (p. 33).
One of the obvious areas that needs to be looked into with regard to this type of
longitudinal analysis is the validity of comparisons, particularly when we know, as
indicated in the preceding section, the limitations, weaknesses and inconsistencies
that characterised the early 1970s and 1980s studies and their methodologies: How
is it possible to compare those statistical date like for like over a period spanning
three decades? Do those comparisons take into account the changing nature of the
television programming in general and programmes within the family hours in
particular? Do they take into account the actual contexts within which sexual
portrayals occurred and the narratives that lend meanings to them? To what extent
can one consider the samples studies representative of one TV seasons let alone of
three decades‘ TV output, and are the individual samples comparable? The study
does not seem to have addressed those issues. However what it has done was to
collapse the statistical data from three decades into comparable categories. Overall,
while those findings provide a baseline for comparisons, albeit quantitative ones, to
track the changing nature of family hour TV in terms of the prevalence of depiction
of sex, these should not be taken at face value.
2.1.2.2 Soap Operas
Like the content analysis studies conducted in the 1970s and 1980s, content
analyses of soap opera‘s sex and sexuality in the 1990s still focused on daytime,
rather than prime-time soap operas, as the greatest concentration of young viewers
was normally found during daytime and leading up to the family hour viewing
(Greenberg and Busselle, 1994).
In one of the 1990s‘ earlier studies, Olson (1994) content analysed two weeks
worth of three US television networks‘ (ABC, CBS, and NBC) daytime soap
operas. The sample was selected randomly from the 1989 and 1990 seasons to cover
ten weekdays, and produced a total of 105 hours of soap operas episodes. The study
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