137 Mutiara Medika Vol. 13 No. 2: 137-142, Mei 2013 Parental Practice and Problem Video Game Playing in Adolescents Praktik Pengasuhan Orangtua dan Masalah Permainan Video Game pada Remaja Romdzati1*, Nilawan Chanthapreeda2 1Master of Nursing Science (International Program), Faculty of Nursing, Khon Kaen University; Dosen, Program Studi Ilmu Keperawatan, Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta 2Assistant Professor, Faculty of Nursing, Khon Kaen University *Email: romdzati@gmail.com Abstrak: Penelitian kuantitatif dengan desain deskriptif ini dilakukan untuk mendeskripsikan data demografi, praktik pengasuhan, dan masalah permainan video game pada remaja. Data dikumpulkan dari 224 orangtua dan 224 remaja yang bersekolah di SD, SMP dan SMA di kota Yogyakarta, provinsi Daerah Istimewa Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Pengumpulan data berlangsung pada bulan April dan Mei 2013 meng- gunakan kuesioner praktik pengasuhan orangtua pada permainan video game remaja dan kuesioner Problem Video Game Playing (PVP). Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa sebagian besar orangtua berada pada level bagus. Sebanyak 42 orangtua (18,8%) termasuk kategori sedang dan sisanya (81,2%) termasuk pada level bagus. Pada penelitian ini tidak ditemukan orangtua yang dikategorikan ke dalam level buruk. Sebagian besar remaja juga tidak masuk ke dalam permainan problematik. Terdapat 15,6% (n=35) remaja masuk dalam kagetori permainan problematik, sedangkan sisanya permainan no problematik Kata kunci: permainan video game, remaja, praktik pengasuhan orangtua Abstract: The descriptive design study was conducted to describe demographic data, parental practice, and problem video game playing in adolescents. Data was collected from 224 parents and 224 adoles- cents who study in one primary, one secondary, and one high school in Yogyakarta municipality, Yogyakarta province, Republic of Indonesia. It was collected using parental practice in video game playing adoles- cents’ questionnaires and problem video game playing (PVP) scale during April to May 2013. The results showed that the majority of parents were in good practice level. Parental practice in video game playing in adolescents was at a moderate practice (18.8%, n=42) and good practice (81.2%, n=182). There were no parents in bad practice level. The majority of adolescents were non problematic playing. There were 84.4% (n=189) non problematic playing, while 15.6% (n=35) were problematic playing. Key words: video game playing, adolescent, parental practice ARTIKEL PENELITIAN 138 Romdzati, Parental Practice and Problem Video Game Playing ... BACKGROUND Nowadays, video game playing has become a popular activity for all ages.1 The growth of video games as an entertainment form is larger than Hollywood movies.2 People can play almost any- where since there are a range of devices that can be played including console, personal computers (PC), and handheld dev ices such as mobile phones. Based on a press release from the Inter- active Software Federation of Europe,3 in the UK, 37% of population aged between 16 and 49 de- scribe themselves as “active gamers”. Adolescents clearly are part of that group. Moreover, the num- ber of American children aged 2 to 17 years play- ing video games had increased up to nine percent when compared to 2009.3 Asian countries also have high numbers of adolescents playing video games. More than three quarters of video game players in Japan, Korea and China are children and adoles- cents.4 The exact numbers are 84.7%, 94.8% and 78.1% in each country, respectively. One research conducted in America and also nationally representative sample showed the preva- lence of pathological video gaming among Ameri- can youth. In this research, it was found that 8.5% of video gamers age 8-18 exhibit pathological pat- tern of videogame play.2 In Thailand, 23.1% of ado- lescents were computer game addicted.5 Four ado- lescents in one district of Indonesia were brought to a psychiatric hospital because of video game addiction. Many of the most popular video games have a negative impact.1 Children and adolescents may become overly involved and even obsessed with video games. Adolescents will display aggressive thoughts, feelings and behaviors after too much exposure to video games, especially violent video games. Actually, during adolescence, the parental practice is important. Parents can influence on adolescent’s life. According to Resnick et al. (1997),6 there is a connection between parent and adolescent relationship with less violent behavior. To illustrate, parental support has positive correla- tion with positive mental and physical health.6 In terms of video game playing, a parental prac- tice is needed to prevent or protect adolescents from adverse effects of video games. They may involve checking video game contents, controlling when or where the adolescents can play,7 monitor- ing gaming behavior, reading content description, banning certain video games, gathering informa- tion on games, pointing out bad or good things in games, explain what happens in games and evalu- ating game contents. Based on above explanation, parental prac- tice in controlling video games impact is notewor- thy, in Indonesia, some parents do it well, but some do not. Parents just know that their child plays video games, but some of them do not know what kind of video games they play. This research was done to identify parental practice and problem video game playing in ado- lescents. 139 Mutiara Medika Vol. 13 No. 2: 137-142, Mei 2013 METHODS The research design of this study was a descriptive study. Data were collected from 224 adolescents who study in Yogyakarta municipality and also 224 parents of those adolescents. Multi stage random sampling was used to determine the sample size. A parental practice in video game playing questionnaire and problem video game playing (PVP) short scale were used in this study. The data was analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) PC +16. RESULTS Table 1. The Frequency of Demographic Characteristics of Parents (n=224) Demographic characteristics Non problematic playing Problematic playing Age (year) 20-40 50 7 41-65 138 28 >65 1 0 Gender Male 68 9 Female 121 26 Religion Moslem 174 32 Christian/Catholic 15 3 Marital status Married 174 34 Divorced 4 0 Widowed 11 1 Education level High school 86 10 Diploma 28 4 Bachelor degree 53 15 Master degree 9 3 Doctoral/PhD 1 1 Others 12 2 Occupation Civil servant 30 6 Teacher/lecturer 13 5 Private employee 80 11 Others 66 13 Giving money for playing game Yes 37 10 No 152 25 Based on Table 1. most of parents were middle adulthood age (74.1%, n=166). The gender of par- ents mostly was female. Parents’ religions were two types: Moslem and Christian/Catholic. There were 208 (92.0%) and 16 (8.0%), respectively. Most of parents had marital status (92.9%, n=208. Educational level of parents were domi- nated with parents graduated from high school (42.9%). Based on parents’ information, most of parents gave information that they did not give money for playing video game to their child. Most of adolescents aged 13-15 year old (46.5%, n=145). Among those three groups, female were bigger amount of number compared with male. Similar with parents’ characteristic, Moslem was the majority in adolescents group. Most of students studied in secondary school (44.7%, n=100). From Table 2. also can be identified that most of students were in the first grade of secondary school, there were 68 adolescents (26.8%). About family structure, most of adolescents came from nuclear family. Table 2. The Frequency of Demographic Characteristics of Adolescents (n=224) Demographic characteristics Non problematic playing Problematic playing Age (year) 10-12 33 2 13-15 16-18 90 66 14 19 Gender Male 78 22 Female 111 13 Religion Moslem 179 32 Christian/Catholic 10 3 Education level Primary school 33 2 Secondary school 86 14 High school 70 19 Family structure Nuclear family 133 25 Single parent family 14 1 Extended family 42 9 140 Romdzati, Parental Practice and Problem Video Game Playing ... Table 3. The Level of Parental Practice in Video Game Playing in Adolescents Parental practice in video game playing in adolescents Freque ncy Percent age (%) Bad practice 0 0 Average practice 42 18.8 Good practice 182 81.2 The data showed that there is no bad practice level. Most of them was in the good practice (81.2%, n=182), meanwhile average practice level is about 18.8% (n=42). Table 4. The Level of Problem Video Game Playing Problem video game playing Frequency (n=224 ) Percentage (%) Non problematic 189 84.4 Problematic 35 15.6 The results shown that there were 189 (84.4%) adolescents non problematic playing and 15.6% (n=35) problematic playing. DISCUSSION Parental practice in video game playing in adolescents Parental practice in video game playing in ado- lescents had four domains. In general, the result showed that most of parents were in good prac- tice. One hundred and eighty two parents (81.2%) did good practice, while 42 parents (18.8%) did average practice. There was no presented paren- tal practice in bad practice level. In this study, the percentage of female parents was more than male. It was 65.6% female (n=147), while the rest of them were male. Females could be better in taking care of family include their child.8 The majority of respondents were also middle adult- hood age (74.1%, n=166). Compared with other stages, the development of middle adulthood gave more support to adolescents. One of middle adult- hood task was helping teenage to become respon- sible adults.8 Moreover, all respondents had religion. Most of them were Moslem. In this religion, parents had responsibility to educate and take care of them.9 It contributed to help parents be good practice. Problem video game playing in adolescents The finding of whole data analysis showed that problematic video game playing had fewer percent- age compared by non problematic video game play- ing. There were 15.6 % problematic video game playing (n=35) and 84.4% non problematic video game playing (n=189). It meant that most of ado- lescents answered no in each item. It was relevant with Salguero and Moran (2002).10 This also matched with former studies. Phillips et al. (1995),11 found that 7.5% of adolescents within age 11-16 year old scored addictive level. Supaket et al. (2008),5 and Srisuwan (2010),12 also had the similar found. They conducted study in Thailand. There were 23.1% secondary students addicted with video game playing, while 20.7% school age children also had the same problem. This result can be supported by some reasons. It was available at Table 3. most of adolescents played video game not so frequently. Most of them spent not so long time a day. Most of them played about 1 to 2 hours per day (68.3%, n=153). It was consistent with Hauge and Gentile (2003),13 study result that addicted adolescents spent more amount of time for playing video game. Besides that, all adolescents were still students. They spent large amount of time at school. It could help adolescents to minimize time for playing automatically. They played video game mostly not during school hours. These were weekday afternoon (42%, n=96) and holiday afternoon (30.8%, n=69). Moreover, more than three quarter (79.5%, n=178) of adolescents 141 Mutiara Medika Vol. 13 No. 2: 137-142, Mei 2013 played video game in their home. From this, par- ents could monitor them. It was different with the occasion that adolescents played video game out- side such as in game center. In game center, ado- lescents had free choice to play video game with- out any limitation from the owner. CONCLUSION The conclusions of this study are thus; the majority parents were in good practice level (81.2%, n=182), the majority of adolescents were non prob- lematic playing (84.4% n=189). Acknowledgement The researcher was in receipt of an Indone- sian government scholarship (Directorate General of Higher Education, Ministry of Education and Culture, Indonesia) at the time of this study and research. The authors would like to thank you to the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Uni- versitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta for support throughout the duration of completing this research. 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