The link between fiction and teenagers’ reading skills: International evidence from the OECD PISA study

TLDR

While extensive evidence links overall reading frequency to higher academic reading scores, the specific impact of different text types on teenagers’ reading performance remains largely unexplored. The study examines how often teenagers read five text types—magazines, non‑fiction, fiction, newspapers, and comics—and how this relates to their PISA reading scores. Data from the PISA 2009 survey of over 250,000 students across 35 industrialised countries were analysed to assess the relationship between reading frequency of each text type and reading proficiency. The analysis revealed a significant fiction effect: frequent fiction readers scored markedly higher on PISA reading tests, whereas no such advantage was found for magazines, non‑fiction, newspapers, or comics; thus, promoting fiction reading—especially among boys from disadvantaged backgrounds—may enhance reading skills.

Abstract

Abstract It is well known that children who read more tend to achieve higher scores in academic reading tests. Much less is known, however, about the link between reading different types of text and young people's reading performance. We investigate this issue using the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009 database, exploring the association between the frequency with which teenagers read five different types of text (magazines, non‐fiction, fiction, newspapers and comics) and their PISA reading scores. Analysing data from more than 250,000 teenagers from across 35 industrialised countries, we find evidence of a sizeable ‘fiction effect’; young people who read this type of text frequently have significantly stronger reading skills than their peers who do not. In contrast, the same does not hold true for the four other text types. We therefore conclude that encouraging young people to read fiction may be particularly beneficial for their reading skills. Interventions encouraging fiction reading may be especially important for boys from disadvantaged socio‐economic backgrounds, who are less likely to read this text type.