Why did the results sound worse in some of the popular media?
Unfortunately, some of the press coverage included the following sentence: “Among the sample the researchers viewed, 20 percent of games with sexual content including partial nudity listed that content on the label; 17 percent of games with profanity listed it on the label, and just 1 percent of games with depictions of tobacco or alcohol listed that on the label.” This statement should have read: “Among the sample the researchers viewed, 27 percent of games depicted sexual content including partial nudity; 27 percent of the games included the use of profanity; and 15 percent of the games included the depiction of alcohol or tobacco. In contrast, only 20 percent of the games in the sample listed a content descriptor for sexual content, 17 percent listed profanity, and just 1 percent of games listed depictions of tobacco or alcohol on the label.” We did not make the conditional statement in the form of what was reported, in part because of the complication that 3 of the games that recei
