Factors Related to Amount and Type of Leisure Time Reading

Abstract

THE STUDY WAS DESIGNED to investigate the relationship between amount of time devoted to leisure reading and a series of personal, home, and school variables. Among the variables examined are gender, level of reading attainment, leisure activities, socioeconomic status, family size, choice of television programs, and location and type of primary school attended. Pupils devoted an average of 5.4 per cent of available leisure time to reading for leisure. Three categories of pupil leisure time reading were identified-book reading, comic reading, and newspaper reading. Substantially more time was devoted to book than to comic reading while little time was spent reading newspapers. Multiple regression analyses revealed that most of the explained variation (22.9 per cent) in time devoted to books was accounted for by a combination of the variables gender, reading attainment, school location, library membership, and birth order. Less than 8 per cent of the variation in time devoted to comic reading was explained by the variables used in the study. Among leisure readers, it was possible to discriminate between those whose reading consisted mainly of books and those whose reading consisted mainly of comics. Gender proved to be the strongest discriminator, with girls tending to devote more time to books and boys tending to devote more time to comics.

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