Sesame Street research facts for kids
In 1969, the famous children's TV show Sesame Street started on National Educational Television (which later became PBS) in the United States. Unlike other kids' shows before it, Sesame Street was created using lots of research. Its makers did over 1,000 studies and experiments to see how the show helped young viewers learn.
By the end of the first season, the group that made Sesame Street, called Children's Television Workshop (CTW), had created a special way of working. They called it "the CTW model." This model combined the skills of researchers and early childhood teachers with those of the show's writers, producers, and directors.
CTW did two main types of research:
- Formative research: This was done inside CTW. It helped them improve the show as they were making it.
- Summative research: This was done by an outside group, the Educational Testing Service (ETS). It measured how well the show taught kids.
CTW researchers even invented ways to see if young viewers were paying attention. Based on what they found, the show's creators changed things to make it better. Studying how children watched TV in this scientific way was a first!
Over the years, summative research, including two big studies in 1970 and 1971, showed that watching Sesame Street really helped kids. It improved their learning, got them ready for school, and boosted their social skills. Later studies also found similar positive effects, even in other countries. Researchers like Gerald S. Lesser said that early tests proved Sesame Street was teaching what it aimed to teach.
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The "CTW Model"
Soon after Sesame Street began, its creators developed the "CTW model." This was a special system for planning, making, and checking the show. It really took shape after the first season.
The CTW model brought together TV producers and teachers. They worked together to create a learning plan for children aged three to five. Formative research helped shape the show as it was being made. Then, independent summative research checked what viewers actually learned. One of the creators, Joan Ganz Cooney, said, "Without research, there would be no Sesame Street."
Cooney gave credit to researchers like Gerald S. Lesser for helping producers and researchers work well together. She said they designed the show like a "research project" where everyone worked as "equal partners." She even called their teamwork an "arranged marriage."
The show's team worked hard to make sure producers and researchers got along. Each group brought their own special skills. Producers learned that researchers could help them understand how kids reacted to the show. Writers and producers used their experience in children's TV. Even though writers were unsure at first, they soon saw that working with researchers and following the learning plan was a key part of making the show creative.
When other countries wanted to make their own versions of Sesame Street (called "co-productions"), they used a similar CTW model. First, they studied what preschool kids in their country needed to learn. Then, they held meetings with experts to create a learning plan, goals, sets, and characters for their show. They also trained the new teams using the CTW model. Each co-production did formative studies to improve their show and, if possible, summative studies to check if their learning plan worked.
Formative Research
Formative research was like a behind-the-scenes check-up for Sesame Street. It was done inside CTW to make sure the show kept children's attention and helped them learn.
How They Did It
Ed Palmer, a key person at CTW, was one of the few experts studying children's TV in the 1960s. He designed and ran CTW's formative research. Author Malcolm Gladwell even said, "Without Ed Palmer, the show would have never lasted through the first season."
CTW researchers were interested in how children behaved and reacted. Palmer invented a tool called "the distractor" to see if kids were paying attention. Two children would watch an episode on a TV. Next to it, a slide show would change every seven seconds. Researchers watched to see when the children looked away from the TV. This way, they could check almost every second of Sesame Street. If an episode kept children's interest 80–90 percent of the time, it would air. If it only worked 50 percent of the time, they would change or remove that part.
In later seasons, they added letter-recognition tests to see what kids knew. This gave them more information than just watching behavior. The "distractor" method was later updated to an "eyes-on-screen" method. This allowed them to test more children at once. They also looked at more natural distractions, like other kids in a group. Another new method, the "engagement measure," recorded how actively children responded, like laughing or dancing.
What They Found
Palmer reported that by the fourth season, Sesame Street episodes almost always kept children's attention over 85 percent of the time. Some parts, even expensive ones, were removed if they didn't test well with kids. The "distractor" method taught them new things about how children watch TV. It created real facts and was the first time children's TV viewing was studied scientifically.
Early studies found that children learned more when they watched carefully or joined in by singing or talking. When tested four weeks later, kids remembered most of what they learned. After six weeks, children who watched Sesame Street regularly scored higher on tests than those who didn't. A study in 1995 found that it was harder for kids to remember the "letter and number of the day." So, the producers started putting short films and animations about one topic together in an episode, instead of spreading different topics throughout.
Summative Research
Summative research checked how well Sesame Street actually taught children.
ETS Studies
CTW asked the Educational Testing Service (ETS) to do its summative research. ETS is a well-respected group, so their findings were trusted. They hired and trained people from local communities to do the studies.
The best way to check the show's success was to compare kids who watched it often with those who didn't. But after the first season, Sesame Street became so popular that it was hard to find kids who didn't watch it! ETS solved this by finding families in areas where the show wasn't broadcast. Later, they used special math methods to compare groups.
ETS did two very important studies in 1970 and 1971. They showed that Sesame Street had a big educational impact on its viewers. These studies proved the early learning effects of the show. ETS reported that children who watched the show the most learned the most, especially with letter recognition.
Here are some cool findings:
- Three-year-olds who watched regularly scored higher than five-year-olds who didn't.
- Kids from lower-income families who watched regularly scored higher than kids from wealthier families who watched less often.
- Similar good results happened for children from homes where English wasn't spoken.
- Kids learned even more if they watched and talked about the show with their parents.
- Children watching at home learned just as much as those watching at school with a teacher.
- Regular viewers adjusted better to school and had more positive attitudes and better friendships.
CTW worried the show might make the gap between rich and poor kids wider, but this didn't happen. Kids from all backgrounds (boys and girls, different ages, locations, and income levels) benefited equally. Studies also suggested the show helped with children's social behavior, though more research was done on learning skills.
Later Studies
In 1979, a study was done in Jamaica to see how Sesame Street affected children who hadn't seen other kids' TV. Researchers found that Jamaican children's interest dropped during parts with the Muppets, maybe because of language or cultural differences. But musical parts were very popular. Overall, the children's learning increased, especially with letters and numbers.
In 1995, a long-term study at the University of Kansas looked at Sesame Street's learning effects over many years. It found that watching educational children's TV early on helped kids get ready for school. Children from less fortunate backgrounds learned just as much per hour of viewing as other kids. The study also found that watching Sesame Street didn't make kids watch more other TV shows or stop them from doing other learning activities.
Other studies have also looked at how Sesame Street helps kids learn:
- A 1990 study found that watching the show helped improve vocabulary, no matter the family size, parents' education, or child's gender.
- Another 1990 study found that Sesame Street home videos helped with vocabulary and identifying words. These videos also encouraged talking with adults, which helped kids learn even more.
In 1994, "The Recontact Study" looked at how Sesame Street affected teenagers who had watched the show when they were little. The study found that teens who watched Sesame Street as preschoolers were positively influenced. Compared to those who didn't watch regularly, they had higher grades in English, math, and science. They also read for fun more often, felt more capable, and showed less aggression. These effects were stronger for boys than for girls.
In 2001, CTW studied how war and natural disasters affected young children. They found that not enough was being done to help kids with these scary events. So, the Workshop created materials to help children and their families cope with things like the September 11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina.
Sesame Street has even been used to test how long babies and toddlers pay attention. In 2004, babies from three months to two years old watched Sesame Street clips and black and white patterns. Their attention spans grew a lot between six and twenty-four months, but only for the Sesame Street material. A 2006 study found that babies paid more attention to video clips than to still pictures, showing that movement helps young babies learn.
In 2010, researchers at the University of Michigan studied how combining Sesame Street videos with print materials, online activities, and teacher training helped kids learn. They found that all the kids they tested in Detroit scored as well as a middle-class group on later tests.
The "most important study" on the show's impact was done in 2015. Researchers found that children who watch Sesame Street are more likely to stay at the right grade level for their age. This was especially true for African American children, boys, and kids from disadvantaged areas. There was a 14 percent drop in the chance of being behind in school. The researchers said these positive effects, which are as big as those from preschool programs, came from the show's focus on learning math and reading, which helped kids get ready for school.
In 2018, a poll found that almost two-thirds of people believed Sesame Street "represents 'the best of America'" and stands for "timeless values."
Images for kids
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Co-creator Joan Ganz Cooney, 1985
