Furnham And Mak Analysis

An Article Summary of Adrian Furnham and Twiggy Mak’s
Sex-Role Stereotyping in Television Commercials: A Review and Comparison of Fourteen Studies Done on Five Continents Over 25 Years 1999

In this article Furnham and Mak have done a cross cultural study by conducting “meta analytic” review of 14 different studies about sex-role stereotyping in TV commercials in different countries and regions, done by different researchers based on the same coding scheme, which is based on McArthur and Resko’s method. By comparing current studies, and studies done over 25 years ago, Furnham and Mak argue that the sex-role stereotyping since 1970s hasn’t changed much during the course of 25 years, (Furnham and Mak 1999). Furnham and Mak however accept the problems of such comparative studies, such as equivalence of the channel, different time periods, and variations in content categories. Plus they also mentioned some other problems such as etic and emic approaches in the content analysis studies.
In their review Furnham and Mak’s method is to find TV commercials which are based predominantly on McArthur and Resko’s system. They continue

They believe that even in the same country, commercial channels differ considerably in their viewing figures, style, and funding. For example being national, regional and their focus of audience affect their commercials. Therefore they assert that it is “near-impossible to find “equivalent channels” in different countries” (Furnham & Mak 1999). The second is the sample equivalence. The time of the day is different for viewer categories therefore it effects the commercials. As also Furnham and Mak believe that the advertisement differs according to the days of week, seasons, and year (Furnham & Mak 1999). The third problem is the content categories. Some researchers have added or changed some of the categories therefor the comparison is difficult Furnham and Mak