Understanding children's reading activities: Reading motivation, skill and child characteristics as predictors

TLDR

The study examined how child characteristics such as sex, age, socioeconomic status, reading skill, and intrinsic/extrinsic motivation predict time spent on various reading activities. The study surveyed 791 children aged 8–11 years to assess engagement time across six reading activity categories. Results showed that intrinsic motivation predicts recreational book reading, age predicts digital text engagement, specific motivation dimensions drive activity choice, and social motives predict magazine and comic reading, highlighting diverse predictors across activities.

Abstract

This study examined the extent to which a range of child characteristics (sex, age, socioeconomic status, reading skill and intrinsic and extrinsic reading motivation) predicted engagement (i.e., time spent) in different reading activities (fiction books, factual books, school textbooks, comics, magazines and digital texts). In total, 791 children (aged 8–11 years) participated. There was considerable variation in the factors predicting engagement in different reading activities. Although intrinsic reading motivation was a good predictor of recreational book reading, age was a stronger predictor of engagement with digital texts. Furthermore, specific dimensions of motivation predicted engagement in different reading activities; being motivated to read challenging texts predicted recreational book reading, whereas being motivated to achieve good grades predicted schoolbook reading. On the other hand, social reasons predicted engagement with magazines and comics. Implications for education and the relationship between child characteristics and choice of reading activities are discussed.