Interest patterns and media preferences (print and television) of boys and girls in grade four and five were studied by subjecting their responses to an interest inventory to separate factor analytic and analysis of variance procedures. The former procedures were used to cluster degree-of-interest responses into larger groupings that could be rank-ordered to describe the interest patterns of the sub-groups; the latter procedures were used to compare the cluster scores of the sub-groups to see if they varied according to race or socioeconomic status. Sex as a factor was determined by inspection of rank-order patterns. General conclusions include: 1) Sex continues to be a major determiner of middle-grade childrens' interests, and boys' and girls' media preference patterns closely resemble their interest patterns. Boys like sports, excitement, and informational content while girls prefer social empathy, fantasy, and content dealing with their recreational interests. Race does not seem to be an important factor affecting children's content interests, but socioeconomics does appear to be a factor influencing children's interest in fantasy. (LH)