Women and Soap Operas: A Study on Watching Motives and satisfaction level

Watching Television and soap operas, is one of the most important activities of most people, particularly women, worldwide. There are various motives for watching T.V, such as obtaining serenity and entertainment, filling up the leisure hours, forgetting daily problems, and gaining information. The present study seeks to study the dimensions of satisfaction obtained from watching T.V soap operas by women. It also aims to find out the social correlations of obtained satisfaction, as well as their probable inter-correlations. The study utilizes Survey method, and data is collected through questionnaire along with interview. Since the “Use and satisfaction”, is the theoretical framework of the study, four-dimensional model of McQuail (including; gaining personal identification, achieving information, establishing social interactions, and obtaining serenity and entertainment) is applied to measure motives of watching (or sought satisfaction) and obtained satisfaction. Motives of watching and obtained satisfaction are considered as dependent variables and measured by investigator-made scales, on the basis of the McQuail model as well as previous research. Some social factors (such as level of education, employment status, socio-economic status-SES-, and rate of watching) are considered as independent variables. To measure the validity of the scales, Content Validity is applied and Alpha Chronbach is used to calculate reliability of the scales. The overall reliability coefficients for motives of watching and obtained satisfaction scales are. 661 and. 911, respectively; indicating strong internal consistency of the scales. The sample study consists of 383 married women residing in Isfahan city within the age range of 20 to 54 years old. SPSS (version 16) software is employed to analyze the collected data. Descriptive findings of the study indicate that slight majority of women have low education and income; while the great majority of them are married and housewives who belong to low SES families. The analytical findings of the study show that the strongest and weakest motives of watching soap opera for women are gaining personal identification and obtaining serenity and entertainment, respectively. On the other hand, the highest and lowest satisfactions which women obtained are the establishing social interactions and achieving information, respectively. Furthermore, there are significant correlations between different dimensions of sought and obtained satisfaction. Finally, the mean of watching motives and obtained satisfaction decreased in contrast with increasing level of education and SES. It seems that the women in this study reinforce their cultural and religious values, acquire socially accepted values, recognize and improve their social and familial status, and explore realities (which are used as criterions to measure gained personal identification) via watching soap operas. However, the subtle analysis indicates that although “gaining personal identification” was the strongest motive of women for watching soap opera, but they reported slight satisfaction in this regard. It appears that soap operas are mostly amusing and establish social interactions rather than inform and give personal identity.