Pretend Play, Gender, and the Mass Media

The social cognitive theory of gender development and differentiation specifically highlights pretend play as a medium through which children can elaborate upon and further their awareness of gendered roles (Bussey and Bandura 1999; Coyne et al. 2014). As they play, children reinforce and practice the gendered behaviors that they have observed from admired adult figures, including those in the media (Bussey and Bandura 1999). When gendered play is coupled with positive responses from adults and peers, children develop higher levels of self-efficacy for repeating those behaviors in the future (Bussey and Bandura 1999). Hence, pretend play serves an important role in children's gender construction. Experimental research situated in social cognitive theory suggests that media-based play can influence children's gender-role conduct. A study by Coyne et al. (2014), for example, examined the influence of superhero television programs on boys' male-stereotyped play and found that boys who watched more superhero programs displayed greater aggression and violence in their play. Conversely, they found no evidence to suggest that male-stereotyped play led to more superhero media exposure. Thus, the findings demonstrated that gender stereotypes in the media could influence real-life gendered behaviors (Coyne et al. 2014). Theorists and researchers, adopting a multiplicity of theoretical frameworks including feminist post-structuralism, queer theory and gender performativity, speculate that young girls are unable to break from the well-defined gendered roles that dominate Disney Princess media in their play (Blaise 2005b; Linn 2009; Pollen 2011). Instead of negotiating gender on their own terms through their own creative processes, girls become entrapped in an Bintensifying loop of commercially constructed fantasies^ that steer them toward Ba view of femininity based on stereotypes of beauty, race, class, and behavior^ (Linn 2009, p. 40). Exposure to pervasive Disney Princess media has the potential to restrict girls' pretend play behaviors and narrow their burgeoning understanding of femininity to a set of gender stereotypes. Few investigations, however, have directly examined the effects of gender stereotypes in Disney Princess media on young girls' pretend play behaviors. One of the only studies to explore this topic, conducted by Wohlwend (2009), investigated the influence of Disney Princesses on the stories that kindergarteners chose to write and act out in class. Using a multi-theoretical framework including feminist poststructuralism and social semiotics, Wohlwend (2009) discovered that girls reenacted the stereotypical roles from Disney Princess media in their free play; however, they often improvised new plots and positions for the characters to overcome gendered obstacles that blocked more Bsatisfying identity performances^ (p. 77). Wohlwend's finding is consistent with anthropological theory that postulates that children make refinements to the problematic and constraining gendered roles that they learn (Corsaro 2006). In this context, then, pretend play may facilitate children's awareness of restrictive gender stereotypes and allow them to improvise more satisfying roles. Therefore, contrasting lines of evidence, situated in various theoretical frameworks, emerge from past literature regarding the effect of Disney Princess media on girls' gendered play behaviors. Whereas some theorists and researchers propose that exposure to Disney Princess media restricts girls' creative play and reinforces negative female gender-role stereotypes, Wohlwend's study (Wohlwend 2009) suggests that girls are able to rewrite media narratives in their play, thus overcoming the static, gendered roles they have viewed. Due to the discrepancies in past literature and the importance of pretend play on children's gender construction, we sought in the current study to add to the limited base of research that addresses these issues. The Present Study The increasing prevalence of Disney Princesses in the media and the gender stereotypes that they maintain raises the question as to what effect these images have on young girls' conceptions of femininity. Our study had two aims: first, to examine girls' perceptions of the princesses and their awareness of gender-role stereotypes present in Disney media and, second, to investigate how girls either reinvented or incorporated Disney's princess stories and characters into their pretend play. To address these aims, we employed a multi-method approach and interpreted the results using the social cognitive theory of gender development and differentiation. Social cognitive theory has precedence in recent research on gender stereotypes and the mass media (Behm-Morawitz and Mastro 2009; Coyne et al. 2014; Coyne et al. 2016; Starr and Ferguson 2012), and it specifies pretend play, the mass media, and gender-typed play materials as important contributors to gender development. Due to past findings (Baker-Sperry 2007), we expected that in their interviews and discussion of the princesses, the preschool girls in our study would endorse the genderstereotyped version of the princesses as provided to them by Disney. However, we further hypothesized that in their pretend princess play, the girls would break from the preexisting Disney stories, devising more dynamic roles for their princess characters and creating more satisfying play experiences. Method Participants Participants included 31 preschool girls as well as 30 of their parents. The girls were between ages 3 (36 months) and 5 (64 months) ( M = 53.48 months, SD = 7.13 months). The child participants also represented a variety of racial/ethnic backgrounds: 13 were Hispanic, 10 Caucasian, 1 Asian, and 7 mixed race. Parents signed informed consent forms for their children and themselves, and child participants gave their assent. Due to real world constraints, including limited time available in the preschool classes, not all of the participants could complete all components of the procedure. Participants were drawn from four classes at two U.S. preschools. Of the four classes, one came from Campus Children's Center (a pseudonym used for confidentiality purposes), which is a member of the organization, Bright Horizons Family Solutions. Campus Children's Center is located in a suburban neighborhood and is the lab school for a well-known college. Monthly tuition rates for participants involved in this study ranged between $495 and $1139 as specified by the preschool's tuition schedule. Of the 31 children involved in this study, 13 of the child participants and 13 of their parents came from Campus Children's Center. The remaining three classes came from Head Start, a government-funded organization, which provides free preschool programs for children whose families live below the poverty line. The Head Start in which we observed is located in an urban area, and the majority of the students come from Spanish-speaking homes (Jacoby and Lesaux 2014). Eighteen of the child participants were drawn from the Head Start center along with 17 of their parents. These two preschools were selected because they provided a range of socioeconomic and racial/ethnic backgrounds.

Describe thedata collection methodsthat the researchers used to answer their research question - for example, did they use standardised surveys, in-depth interviews, online questionnaires etc? Did thedata collection methodsmatch the methodologyof the study? What is it about the data collection methods that show that they match the methodology?