Appendix C: Content AnalysisAfter an informal examination of the material, definitions of the score categories were agreed upon and noted in writing. Several magazines were scored jointly, and discussions of borderline cases resulted in slight adjustments of our definitions. Scoring was done on prepared score sheets, with one sheet for each magazine series. All photographs in the magazine were scored. When either one of us encountered a photograph which might have been interpreted in more than one way, we consulted each other. The scoring was done over a period of several consecutive days to ensure consistency and because we wanted to return the material to its owners as soon as possible. The total number of photographs analyzed was 10,370. Of these, 4,630 were found in girl magazines and 5,740 in boy magazines. The following variables were registered:
The following aspects were analyzed:
The chosen weights cannot be regarded as having any absolute value,
since the choice of intervals is arbitrary. It is obvious that the
category "bizarre" should carry a heavier weight than
"genital," but how much higher is not possible to determine by
objective means. Boys versus Girls The frequency distribution of hardness for boy and girl magazines is shown in Figure C1. The graphic is described in the body of the text and shown in Table 2 on page 70. The distribution for sex is significant: X2 (df = 6) is 1351 (p < 0.0001). The average hardness index for girl and boy magazines are
respectively 2.71 and 1.87. The average for all the magazines was
2.33. The difference in hardness index between the two groups,
tested with Wilcoxon rank sum test is significant: X2
(girls) = 214, X2 (boys) = 75; p < 0.01. The Country of Origin The photographs were divided as seen in Table C1.200 The distribution of hardness for the different countries of origin
was significantly different: X2 (df = 18) is 2409 (p
< 0.0001). "Average" in the table above refers to the
average hardness index for the photographs of the respective countries.
Testing for significance between individual countries was not done,
since the sample is not large enough to yield meaningful results. Persons in the Photographs Finally, a distinction was made between photographs depicting one child, photographs depicting two or more children, and photographs in which children with adults appeared. Significance testing was carried out for all the magazines, the girl magazines and boy magazines.201 In a certain sense, an adult is present in all the photographs: the photographer. For naturist photographs, in which the child is not conscious of the picture being taken, this obviously plays no role in determining the demeanor of the child. For many of the photographs, the child is posing, facing the camera, and clearly conscious of the pictures being taken. The photographer, presumably an adult, is clearly present by implication. Because of obvious difficulties we have restricted this analysis to the objective picture content. Adults who do not appear in the photograph are not counted as present. We considered making a distinction between "pornographic"
and "sexual" activity, defined as follows: Pornographic
activity is directed at arousing the viewer of the photograph, so that
display of the genitals and posing provocatively would be defined as
pornographic. On the other hand, sexual activity is focused on the
arousal of the child. Masturbation scenes, in which the child is
absorbed in the sexual activity without apparent attention to the
photographer, would be defined as sexual. As a general trend the
girl photographs appeared more often pornographic and the boy
photographs more often sexual. We did not attempt to quantify this
because of the difficulty finding an objective criterion for determining
the thoughts of the child at the time the picture was taken. Girl Magazines The number of photographs are given in Table C2. The letters represent one child (A), two or more children (B) and one or more children with an adult (C). On more than half of the photographs in these magazines only one girl can be seen alone. The number on which more than one girl is seen, without adults, is the lowest. The distribution of the photographs over the categories of hardness is significantly different for the three groups: X2 (df = 12) is 2548 (p < 0.0001). The majority of the photographs without adults present were mild, being mostly natural naked and posed naked photographs, while the majority of photographs which include adults have a heavy pornographic character. Category five shows a jump representing for the large part display of the genitals, such as parting of the labia with the hands, though some of them showed masturbation, not only showing the child explicitly engaged in pornographic activity but also conscious of the photographer. On the basis of these indices the difference in hardness for the
groups A, B and C were tested with the Wilcoxon signed rank test.
The difference in hardness between A and B photographs is significant at
p = 0.0266. The difference between the B and C photographs is
significant at p < 0.0001. Boy Magazines The division of the boy photographs over the three groups is shown in Table C3. The X2 test for independence is significant: X2 (df =12) is 26l7 (p < 0.0001). In the boy photographs, as in the girl photographs, more than half of the photographs consisted of one boy alone, frequently posing naked, but mostly natural photographs and a remarkably large proportion of portrait and fully clothed photographs. The number of photographs in which an adult appears is also much lower than in the girl magazines. The boy photographs include many more non-pornographic and mild photographs, but, at the same time, a greater proportion of the B category fall in the middle range, and a greater proportion of photographs with an adult fell in the three hardest categories, which is reflected in the average values. One can speculate over the possible reasons for these differences. The increased proportion of boys found in the B group, and the higher average hardness index for this group, may be the result of the greater number of possibilities, both photographic and action, when two boys get together compared to the possibilities that exist when two girls get together. Boys, after all, have both the equipment and inclination to act out their sexuality in more obvious ways. Of the boys photographed with adults the proportion engaged in the hardest activities with adults was slightly lower than for girls, nevertheless, some of the boy pictures, which we placed in the bizarre category, showed violent rape, including some in which the boy was screaming in pain. These differences mean that comparison of the groups between sexes should be done with caution, for the meaning of group B and group C, as defined by us, may not be exactly the same for boys and for girls. On the basis of the hardness index of the boy photographs, the difference in the distribution of hardness was tested with the Wilcoxon signed rank test. The difference between A and B photographs is significant (p <
0.0001). The difference between B and C is also significant (p =
0.0078). All Magazines The division of all 10,370 photographs over three groups is seen in Table C4. More than half of the photographs show only one child, and the remainder is divided equally between photographs with two or more children and photographs with adults present. The majority (61%) fall into the three lightest categories, and in the photographs without adults present it is 75%, while with adults it is only 14%. The distribution within the three categories was significantly different for all three groups. X2 (df = 12) is 5155 (p < 0.0001). The difference between group A and group B, tested with the Wilcoxon signed rank test was significant (p < 0.0001) and the same for the B and C groups (p < 0.0001). It would be a mistake to extrapolate from the photographs to the
kinds of activities that children engage in with each other and with
adults when sexual contacts take place. Persons engaged in violent
abuse may be less likely to record the events for fear of
exposure. Likewise, relationships in which love and mutual respect
characterize the encounters may also be less likely to appear in
published pornography, since knowing publication of such pictures is
hard to reconcile with respect for the child. The differences and
parallels between that which is seen on the photographs and that which
typically occurs among children and between adults and children when
sexual relationships take place cannot be determined from the
photographs alone.
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