Parents Guide Data Dictionary

Fresh

The Parents Guide dataset provides content advisory information for IMDb titles, covering five categories of potentially sensitive content. This data helps parents, educators, and content platforms make informed decisions about age-appropriateness.

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Structure

Each title's Parents Guide record contains a parentsGuide array, where each element covers one of the five content categories.

Field	Type	Description
titleId	string	IMDb title ID
parentsGuide	array	Array of category assessments

Per-Category Fields

Field	Type	Description
category	string	Content category name
severity	string	Overall severity level
votes	object	Vote breakdown by severity level
parentsGuideItems	array	Individual descriptive items (advanced version only)

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Content Categories

Category Value	Display Name
sexNudity	Sex and Nudity
violenceGore	Violence and Gore
profanity	Profanity
alcoholDrugsSmoking	Alcohol, Drugs, and Smoking
frighteningIntenseScenes	Frightening and Intense Scenes

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Severity Levels

The overall severity for each category is determined by the median vote across all user contributions:

Value	Meaning
None	The content is absent or negligible
Mild	Present but not gratuitous
Moderate	Clearly present; may be of concern to some
Severe	Significant or graphic presence

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Votes Object

The votes object contains vote counts for each severity level:

Field	Type	Description
noneVotes	integer	Users who rated this category as None
mildVotes	integer	Users who rated this category as Mild
moderateVotes	integer	Users who rated this category as Moderate
severeVotes	integer	Users who rated this category as Severe

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Full JSON Example

{
  "titleId": "tt0068646",
  "parentsGuide": [
    {
      "category": "violenceGore",
      "severity": "Severe",
      "votes": {
        "noneVotes": 12,
        "mildVotes": 89,
        "moderateVotes": 234,
        "severeVotes": 891
      },
      "parentsGuideItems": [
        "Several scenes of gun violence, including close-range shootings.",
        "A man is strangled with a wire in a prolonged scene.",
        "A horse's severed head is shown in a bed, with some blood."
      ]
    },
    {
      "category": "sexNudity",
      "severity": "Mild",
      "votes": {
        "noneVotes": 201,
        "mildVotes": 445,
        "moderateVotes": 98,
        "severeVotes": 12
      },
      "parentsGuideItems": [
        "Brief partial nudity in a non-sexual context.",
        "Some kissing and mild romantic content."
      ]
    },
    {
      "category": "profanity",
      "severity": "Mild",
      "votes": {
        "noneVotes": 145,
        "mildVotes": 512,
        "moderateVotes": 67,
        "severeVotes": 8
      }
    },
    {
      "category": "alcoholDrugsSmoking",
      "severity": "Moderate",
      "votes": {
        "noneVotes": 34,
        "mildVotes": 189,
        "moderateVotes": 367,
        "severeVotes": 45
      },
      "parentsGuideItems": [
        "Characters drink wine and spirits throughout the film.",
        "Smoking is depicted by multiple characters."
      ]
    },
    {
      "category": "frighteningIntenseScenes",
      "severity": "Moderate",
      "votes": {
        "noneVotes": 67,
        "mildVotes": 234,
        "moderateVotes": 489,
        "severeVotes": 156
      }
    }
  ]
}

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Standard vs. Advanced Version

Two versions of the Parents Guide dataset are available:

Version	parentsGuideItems	Use Case
Standard	Not included	Severity level only — suitable for ratings displays
Advanced	Included	Full descriptive text — suitable for detailed content warnings

The parentsGuideItems array contains individual text descriptions written by IMDb users. This field is only present in the advanced version of the dataset. If you only need severity levels and vote counts, use the standard version to reduce data volume.