England, Descartes, and Collier-Meek (2011), authors from Sex Roles, examined gender roles portrayed in Disney Princess films and the gendered nature of the rescues to test their three hypotheses.

The researchers used a coded content analysis to classify each quality portrayed by the characters. Their objective is to understand the gendered content better in the Disney Princess movies and to discuss the possible benefit of the information acquired. The first hypothesis expected that the gender role portrayal of the prince and princess would differ. This was strongly supported when they found that the prince and princess’ gender roles vary greatly. The second hypothesis focused on the number of rescues the prince would do and the number of times the princess would be saved.

This hypothesis was also proven when their findings showed that the prince evidently demonstrated more rescues and the princesses were saved more. Furthermore, the third hypothesis emphasized the changes of the films over time. Specifically, they predicted that there would be an increase in androgyny among the characters. They found this compatible with the results of their analysis.

The authors recommended that future researchers would study how children interpret this information since their study focused only on the gender role portrayals in the Disney films.