In 2004, Christakis and colleagues published an article in which they claimed that early childhood television exposure causes later attention problems, a claim that continues to be frequently promoted by the popular media. Using the same National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 data set (N = 2,108), we conducted two multiverse analyses to examine whether the finding reported by Christakis and colleagues was robust to different analytic choices. We evaluated 848 models, including logistic regression models, linear regression models, and two forms of propensity-score analysis. If the claim were true, we would expect most of the justifiable analyses to produce significant results in the predicted direction. However, only 166 models (19.6%) yielded a statistically significant relationship, and most of these employed questionable analytic choices. We concluded that these data do not provide compelling evidence of a harmful effect of TV exposure on attention.

2004 年，Christakis 及其同事发表了一篇文章，在文章中他们声称早期儿童电视曝光会导致后期注意力问题，大众媒体继续经常宣传这一说法。使用相同的 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 数据集 ( N= 2,108），我们进行了两次多元宇宙分析，以检查 Christakis 及其同事报告的发现是否对不同的分析选择具有鲁棒性。我们评估了 848 个模型，包括逻辑回归模型、线性回归模型和两种形式的倾向评分分析。如果这个说法是真的，我们会期望大多数合理的分析会在预测的方向上产生显着的结果。然而，只有 166 个模型 (19.6%) 产生了统计上显着的关系，并且其中大多数采用了有问题的分析选择。我们得出的结论是，这些数据并没有提供令人信服的证据，证明电视暴露对注意力的有害影响。