Since the first flickerings of television in the UK, educationists have debated the influence of programmes on children rather than investigated how children actually use the programmes.

M ire Messenger Davies and her research team have tried to remedy this fault, reasoning that children are the best people to ask about how television serves children. This is an inquiry made more urgent, she maintains, by the threat that the growth of self-regulating satellite and cable television poses to public service broadcasting.

Although the BBC commissioned the research, her analysis is sound and cannot be accused of partiality. Just over 1,300 children aged between six and 12 completed questionnaires and joined in role-play exercises meant to ensure that, for once, they could be talked with rather than about. Sometimes amusing (“Dear Children’s Television, can you put Ace Ventura Pet Detective on another day because on Monday and Wednesdays I have swimming lessons”: boy, nine) and always interesting, the children’s views, collected in 1996 and 1997, give a valuable insight into what they expect of drama on television.

Most of the findings are all that concerned adults would wish for. Far from being irresponsible in judgment and conduct (the author cites an exercise in which media studies teachers, told to act as pupils involved in role-play, were unduly disruptive), the majority of children showed sterling powers of organisation and a keen sense of social and moral responsibility.

So much so, in fact, that the overall response would have made even Lord Reith glow. The first BBC director general’s three pillars of civilised broadcasting - “entertainment, education, information” - are not only recognised by the children’s responses, but reinforced.

While the children in the survey disliked television news, they acknowledged that it was necessary. They said drama should deal sensitively with the vulnerable and show bad behaviour being punished. Many were concerned with what their younger siblings might watch. Contrary to expectations, children from “least-privileged” schools chose traditional forms of drama - those based on books and historical themes - rather than more populist modes.

The survey finds little evidence of “the demon child and the couch potato of tabloid mythology”. Such creatures are usually the prime suspects in what media academics describe as “moral panics” - periods of public anxiety caused by alarmist news coverage of, for example, children’s exposure to violent or sexually explicit media material. Recently, psychologists expressing concern about such issues have been admonished by several academics for contributing to public alarm.

Messenger Davies rightly deplores these often spiteful reproaches, arguing that psychologists have every right to declare their (informed) opinions without being accused of further amplifying needless public fears. Her sensible remarks are typical of a book that consistently relates research findings to the big media issues of the moment: state-supported versus commercial broadcasting; censorship; moral education.

Those more quantitatively minded will lament the want of comprehensive statistical data, but even they should be happy with the overall conclusion: the kids are all right.