Abstract
There appears to be a dramatic decline in attitude toward reading between 2006 and 2011 for ten year-olds taking the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) examination. This ‘decline’, however, is probably not real but is the result of a change in the attitude questionnaire, mentioned only in the fine print in the 2011 PIRLS publication. The scoring of the 2011 version of the questionnaire was profoundly influenced by students’ report of outside school reading; the scoring of the 2006 version was not.
Keywords
The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), conducted by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), aims to measure the reading comprehension performance of Grade 4 (mostly ten year-old) students on a regular five-year cycle. The first assessment was conducted in 2001 (Campbell et al., 2001).
Along with a reading test, PIRLS asks students, parents and teachers to fill out questionnaires about reading habits and instruction. We focus here on the results of questionnaires on reading habits filled out by students, specifically the ones showing an apparently clear and dramatic decline in attitude toward reading from 2006 to 2011. Table 1 presents the overall average for all countries that participated in PIRLS (49 in 2011, 40 in 2006) as well as a few examples of individual countries.
Apparent Decline in Attitude toward Reading: Percent with High Scores on a Measure of Reading Attitude.
2006: Exhibit 4.1: ‘Index of students’ attitudes toward reading (SATR) with trends.’ (Mullis et al., 2007).
2011: Exhibit 8.1: ‘Students like reading’ (Mullis et al., 2012).
We frequently hear that ‘children these days’ don’t like to read (these accusations have appeared steadily and frequently in the United States for decades e.g. Rothstein, 1998; Iynegar and Ball, 2007). Those who hold this position will find apparent supporting evidence from the data in Table 1.
We present data showing that this ‘decline’ is, most likely, a result of changes in the way PIRLS measured reading attitude, changes that are not obvious to those reading the reports without a detailed examination of the fine print.
The 2006 Ratings
The PIRLS attitude measure, the Students’ Attitude Toward Reading Index (SATR), was originally used with the 2001 examination (Mullis et al., 2003). The same measure was used in 2006. Students were asked if they agreed a lot, agreed a little, disagreed a little or disagreed a lot with each of these statements:
I read only if I have to*
I like talking about what I read with other people
I would be happy if someone gave me a book as a present
I think reading is boring*
I enjoy reading
(* = reverse coded)
(Question 14, PIRLS 2006 Student Questionnaire).
A ‘high’ SATR score was defined as one in which the average response was between ‘agreed a little’ and ‘agreed a lot.’ Table 1 presents the percentage of students who had ‘high’ SATR scores.
The 2011 Ratings
The 2011 measure differed from earlier versions of the SATR in two ways. It used the same five items presented with the 2006 (and 2001) PIRLS, presented above, but added a sixth: ‘I would like to have more time for reading’ (Question R7, PIRLS 2011 Student Questionnaire).
As was the case in 2006, students needed an average of between ‘agree a lot’ and ‘agree a little’ to be classified in the ‘like reading’ category.
This is not a major change. But the second change is extremely important: The 2011 PIRLS reading attitude measure also included two more items: I read for fun. I read things that I choose myself.
And the possible responses were:
(1) everyday or almost everyday,
(2) once or twice a week,
(3) once or twice a month, or
(4) never or almost never (Questions R2a and b, PIRLS 2011 Student Questionnaire).
For a student to be classified in the ‘like reading,’ category, the student had to choose option (1) everyday or almost everyday, no matter how the student responded on the other items. In other words, the response to outside of school reading placed a ceiling over the measure of reading attitude in 2011: If a student was not a frequent outside-of-school reader, the student could not be classified as liking reading, regardless of that student’s responses on the other SATR items.
It appears to be the case that this change is responsible for the apparent decline in reading attitudes presented in Table 1.
Reading for Fun: 2006
The 2011 PIRLS did not contain separate questions on reading for fun outside of school, but the 2006 PIRLS did. Table 2 presents the results from PIRLS 2006, with Exhibit 4.6, showing the percentage of students saying that they ‘read for fun outside of school’ everyday or almost everyday (Question 3, PIRLS 2006 Student Questionnaire). Results are presented for the average of all countries participating as well as those included in Table 1.
Percent Reporting Reading for Fun Outside of School Everyday or Almost Every Day (2006 PIRLS).
Source: PIRLS, 2006, Exhibit 4.6; Mullis et al., 2007.
Table 3 compares ‘reading for fun’ scores from Table 2 with attitude scores from Table 1. The ‘reading for fun’ scores do indeed form a ceiling over the 2011 attitude scores: No 2011 attitude is higher than the 2006 ‘for fun’ scores (1).
The Ceiling Effect.
Conclusion
Attitudes toward reading may or may not have changed between 2006 and 2011, but the PIRLS Attitude scales provide no data on this one way or the other. The ‘decline’ that appears in the PIRLS reports may simply be an artifact of the change in the reading attitude questionnaire, a conclusion that is consistent with at least some interpretations of longitudinal studies of a decline in reading (Krashen, 2008; Rothstein, 2008).
Footnotes
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.