Reading Behavior of the American Public

 

Writing is a way to communicate with others. The written word has been stored for many years in the book, and also magazines and newspapers. 

People are able to obtain the accumulated knowledge of past scholars, scientists, and thinkers through reading. The teaching of reading skills to young children has been important for centuries.

Reading has been a requirement in the schools for a long time.  Reading is one of the ways that children learn about the world around them, and become good citizens.  Children are required to read in school.   But when children graduate from school and are no longer required to read, what do they do then? 

What is Reading for Pleasure?

 

There are many kinds of reading: you can read as a part of your job, and as a school assignment. You can read to do research on a project that you have. Then there is reading that you do on your own free or leisure time. 

But what is reading for pleasure? Christina Clark and Kate Rumbold of the The National Literacy Trust, a British nonprofit organization, defines reading for pleasure as “Reading that we do of our own free will anticipating the satisfaction that we will get from the act of reading.”   In this study we will focus on reading for pleasure, except where there is no information on this type of activity.

 

 

 

Value of Reading for Pleasure

Why is reading important?  In a report that I will talk about later, called To Read or Not to Read, it says that reading has the following positive effects:

• Reading for pleasure correlates strongly with academic achievement.
• Employers now rank reading and writing as top deficiencies in new hires.
• It also says that good readers generally have more financially rewarding jobs.
• Good readers play a crucial role in enriching our cultural and civic life
• Good Readers make good citizens 

The report mentioned above concludes that “Reading frequently for pleasure is a behavior to be cultivated with the same zeal as academic achievement, financial or job performance, and global competitiveness.”  P 94

 

 

 

How do we study Reading Behavior?

The best way to study reading behavior is to keep track of what everybody in the United States does every day and carefully record how much each person reads and for how long. This, of course would be very difficult to do, with over 300 million people in the United States.  So we can rely on other methods to study reading behavior.

• (1) We can find out how much people spend on reading materials.  The government keeps track of what people buy in Consumer Expenditure data. 
•  (2) We can also study reading behavior by looking at Public Library circulation.
• (3) We can also study reading behavior by conducting surveys in which people are asked what they read and how often they read books, magazines and journals. There have been many studies and surveys in the past 80 or so years in which people were asked what they read. 

In this presentation I will look at the last method, by looking at surveys conducted about reading. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. Studying Reading Behavior by looking at surveys

Finding out how what or how much people read before the late nineteenth century is very difficult on a national scale.  You can gain information about who read what by looking at diaries and journals of individuals, but that is just one person. There were no surveys conducted that we know about in the more distant past that asked questions about how much a person read But the best way to find out who reads what is to ask a random sample of the whole population what they do about reading. 

 

 

 

The earliest Studies of reading behaviors were done by librarians in the first twenty-five years of the twentieth century, and they were trying to determine what attracted readers to libraries. Also in the late 1920’s there were some studies that tried to sample small local populations to determine reading patterns. These early surveys were not done on a national scale.  Starting in the 1930’s the pollster George Gallup began to ask questions on reading. In the 1940’s studies on reading were conducted by industry groups, and beginning in the 1950’s there were studies on reading being performed by educators, social scientists, librarians,  pollsters and industry groups.  In the last twenty five years there have been numerous studies conducted on reading by the big polling companies, the government, and private companies.

 

 

Trying to compare these surveys over time to find trends in reading is difficult in some ways because the surveyors didn’t ask the same questions in the same way. But you can still compare these surveys if you take that fact into consideration.

 

 

 

Early Reading Studies

We will now concentrate on the reading of books only.  The first reading study was done in 1923 by Rhey Boyd Parson in which he interviewed 314 adults in the Chicago area.  He found that the people interviewed read about 93 minutes a day and 53% said that they read in books each day.

 In 1945 Link and Hopf did a national survey of 4000 adults and found that only 21% of respondents reported that they had read a book yesterday.  This is a 32% difference in reported reading activities, which could be partly explained by sampling differences.

Other studies and surveys done after 1945 continued to show varying percentages of people reading. 

 

 

Current Reading Surveys

We will now go and look at what current surveys say about Adult Reading Habits.

 

 

 

 

	Reading books in the past year	Reading no books in the past year	Reading a book yesterday or today
Parson (1923)			53%  said that they read in books each day
Gray & Munroe (1929)	50% read books at all 75% read magazines, 95% read newspapers
Public Opinion (1937)			29%
Link & Hopf (1945)			21%
Robinson (1946)			20%
Library’s Public (1948)	50%
Survey Research Center (1948)		48% read less than one book a year
Gallup (1949)			21%
Gallup (1952)			18%
Gallup (1954)	82%
Asheim (1955)		75% “not much more than 25% of the population reads even as little as one book a month”
Gallup (1957)			23%
Sharon (1972)			33% books  39% magazines 73% newspapers
Gallup (1975)	84% answered yes to having completed a book in part or whole in the past year
Gallup (1978)	88% (either part way or all the way through)	8%
Yankelovich (1978)	94% of adults had read either newspapers, magazines or books in the past 6 months.  55% had read a book, 39% read mag/newspapers
Reading at Risk (1982)	57% reads literature
Market Facts (1983)	50% (Past six months)
Gallup (1990)			37%
Reading at Risk (1992)	54% reads literature 61% READ ANY BOOK AT ALL
Pew (1994)			31%
Reading at Risk (2002)	47% reads literature, 57% read any book at all
Gallup  (2002)	87% (either part way or all the way through)	13%
Nat Assessment of Adult Literacy (2003)		38% (less than once a week or never)	32%
Gallup (2005)	83%	16%	47%
Pew (2006)			38%
AP (2007)	73%	27%

 

 

 

 

The Reading at Risk Study

This is a study that is actually called The Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, and it is conducted by the Bureau of the Census every five years.  The National Endowment of the Arts  used the data from this survey to produce the Reading at Risk report on adult literary reading. The term “literary” in this study means a work of literature. The latest survey of 17,000 individuals was conducted in 2002 by randomly selecting phone numbers and calling those numbers. This is one of the largest sample sizes in any of the studies. The 2002 survey is compared with similar surveys conducted in 1982 and 1992.  The results of the surveys indicate:

 

 

 

·         47% of adults read literature in the past 12 months, down from 56% in 1982

·         57% of adults read any book in the past 12 months, down from 61% in 1992

·         The decline rate in literary reading is accelerating  (from 5% between 82 and 92 to 14% between 92 and 02)

 

·         Literary reading is declining among both men and women, but at a slower rate among women

·         Literary reading is declining among all races/ethnicities

·         Literary reading is declining among all education levels

·         Literary reading is declining among all age groups

        

·         Steepest decline in literary reading is among the youngest age groups

·         The decline in reading correlates with increased participation in a variety of electronic media  such as Internet

·         Also indicated by this study is that more women than men read literature 55/37%. 

 

 

 

 

Dana Gioia, the Chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts, draws this conclusion from the results of this study : “Literary reading in America is not only declining rapidly among all groups, but the rate of decline has accelerated, especially among the young.” 

He also says:  “Reading is not a timeless, universal capability. Advanced literacy is a specific intellectual skill and social habit that depends on a great many educational, cultural, and economic factors. As more Americans lose this capability, our nation becomes less informed, active, and independent-minded. These are not qualities that a free, innovative, or productive society can afford to lose.”

This is a major study of reading trends in America. I have found no criticisms of this study. The only problem is that it only goes back twenty years, to 1982. If this study had been going on for several decades previous, then it could more clearly show long term trends.  The next time this study will be conducted is in May of 2008.  It will be interesting to see what that survey will tell about adult reading habits.

 

 

To Read or Not to Read Study

 

 

 

About three and a half years after The Reading at Risk study was released, The National Endowment for the Arts released a second study, called To Read or Not to Read: A Question of National Consequence. This study compiles data from numerous sources, including the Reading at Risk report just mentioned,   but as it says in the study, it has “never been analyzed and assembled as a whole.”  Published in November 2007,

Dana Gioia, (Ja-o-e-a) the Chairman, provides again the general conclusions reached by this study:

 

 

“When one assembles data from disparate sources, the results often present contradictions. This is not the case with To Read or Not to Read. Here the results are startling in their consistency. All of the data combine to tell the same story about American reading.  The story the data tell is simple, consistent, and alarming.  Although there has been measurable progress in recent years in reading ability at the elementary school level, all progress appears to halt as the children enter their teenage years.  There is a general decline in reading among teenagers and adult Americans.  Most alarming, both reading ability and the habit of regular reading have greatly declined among college graduates.”

 

 

The main conclusions reached by this study were:

      Americans are spending less time reading

      Reading comprehension skills are eroding

      These declines have serious civic, social, cultural and economic implications

 

Other conclusions

• Young adults are reading fewer books in general
• Reading is declining as an activity among teenagers
• College attendance no longer guarantees active reading habits
• Teens and young adults spend less time reading than people of other age groups
• Even when reading does occur, it competes with other media. Youth often read while watching TV, listening to music, instant messaging, e-mailing, or playing computer games
• American families are spending less on books than at almost any other time in the past two decades
•  
• “Reading frequently for pleasure is a behavior to be cultivated with the same zeal as academic achievement, financial or job performance, and global competitiveness”

 

 

 

 

Fault of to Read or Not to Read

The To Read or Not to Read report has generated its share of critics. Matthew Kirschenbaum (Kir-shen-bom) in his Chronicle of Higher Education article, Dec 7, 2007 debunks the Read or not to Read study because it does not take into consideration the changing climate of reading and the failure to really include online reading in the report. There is a wide array of kinds of reading and reading materials online.    This  boils down into the question of what is the future of the book, in print or online form, something that I am not prepared to get into here. 

However much the critics complain about the study not dealing with online reading, the report does say this:

“Unless “book-reading” is specifically mentioned, study results on voluntary reading should be taken as referencing all varieties of leisure reading (e.g., magazines, newspapers, online reading), and not books alone.”

So they say that they include online reading in their report.

 

 

Ben Vershbow posted the following recently on the IF:BOOK BLOG about the To Read or Not to Read Report:

 

 

“Though clearly offered with the best of intentions, the report demonstrates an astonishingly simplistic view of what reading is and where it is and isn't occurring. Overflowing with bar graphs and and charts measuring hours and minutes spent reading within various age brackets, the study tries to let statistics do the persuading, but fails at almost every turn to put these numbers in their proper social or historical context, or to measure them adequately against other widespread forms of reading taking place on computers and the net”. Posted on Nov 29, 2007 by ben vershbow on the If:Book blog.

 

 

Some critics of the To Read or Not to Read Study complain that the National Endowment for the Arts is trying to scare up a literacy crisis.

Nancy Kaplan, Executive Director of the School of Information Arts and Technologies at the University of Baltimore, states that the much of the NEA’s support for its argument comes from its presentation of the statistical data, and she shows that the NEA created misleading graphs based on manipulated data.

She also states that  “There is little evidence of an actual decline in literacy rates or proficiency. AS a result, the NEA’s core argument breaks down….Like many other federal agencies under our current political regime, the National Endowment for the Arts seems to have fixed the data to fit its desired conclusions.”

So many of the conclusions of the NEA may be unreliable in this latest report.

 

 

Other Surveys: Pew

In June of 2006, the Pew Research Center conducted a survey of 3,204 people about the ways that they access news. One of the questions asked was: “Not including school or work-related books, did you spend any time reading a book yesterday?” 38% of the respondents said yes. This same question had been asked in  Feb 1994.  The surprising thing is that 30% said yes to this question in 1994, and 38% in 2006, indicating an increase of 8%, suggesting that more people are reading books today, not less, and going against the results of the To Read or Not to Read Study.

Associated Press

The Associated Press interviewed 1,774 people on August 6-8, 2007, The people in this survey were asked the question: “Have you read any books in the past year?” This survey indicated that 27% of Americans  had read no books in the past year. 

• It was reported that women read the most.
• Also reported that seniors (those over age 50) read the most, going against some other  surveys
• Whites read more than blacks and Hispanics
• Those with college degrees read more than those who don’t

The Gallup Surveys

The Gallup organization does surveys on all kinds of topics. The most recent one done on reading was in May 2005 in which the 1006 people interviewed by telephone and were asked: Do you happen to be reading any books or novels at present?  Results:

·         And 47% said yes. This was up 26 percentage points when the same question was asked in January 1949.

·         Only 16% read no books in the past year. This was double the percentage who said they read no books in 1978. 

The Gallup Surveys also suggests that the percentage of Americans reading every day is not declining, but increasing.

 

 

	None	1-10	Over 10	No answer
2005 May	16	52	31	1
1978 Jul	8	46	42	4

 

 

The National Assessment of Adult Literacy

This is a survey conducted by the Department of Education through the National Center for Education Statistics. The survey was given to 19,714 adults aged 16 and older between May 2003 and February 2004. This survey found for people that read books every day:

• Adult reading habits were found to be positively associated with educational attainment,  the more education a person had, the more likely they were to read books, magazines or newspapers
• More women than men read books 38/25 (not so with magazines and newspapers) 49/47

Comparing all reading surveys 1923 to 2007

Reading Trends of Magazines and Books

From the period from about 1937 to 2006, readership of newspapers have declined from 90% of the population to 37%.

The readership of magazines has gone from about 45% before WWII, peaked at 62% in 1960, and has been going down ever since. In 1994 the number of people who said that they had read a magazine yesterday was at 33% and it declined to 24% by 2006.  So readership of magazines has been going down for years.

Putting it all together. The trends in reading 1923 to 2007

Let us first look at surveys through the years that asked the question : have you read any books in the past year?

Looking at the table it appears that the percentage of people who said that they read a book in the last year goes up and down, varying from 20% to 88%.  Looking at the table, it indicates that the percentage of reading went up from the late 1940’s to the late 1970’s, and then down from the 1980’s to 2002 and then back up again and it is currently going down. This information is presented here is questionable because there are two surveys conducted in 2002, and they each have very different results.  The Gallup survey indicated that 87% of the people had read a book in the past year. However, the Reading at Risk Study concluded that only 57% of the population read any books at all in the previous year. However, if we take the chart at face value, the percentage of people who read any books in a year is going down. However, there has not been enough years that it has been going down to start a trend.

 

 

 

 

 

Now let us look at surveys that asked the question: are you currently reading any books?. The percentage of people who said that they did shows a better trend. IT begins at 53% in 1923 and decline to 18% by 1952 and then slowly increase again. Again varying sample sizes and methods may have contributed to the wide range of results. Again, if we just look at the table, we can see that the percentage of people who are currently reading a book is going down, however a one year decline is not enough time to start a trend.

 

Time Use Studies

Another way that you can determine how the reading habits of Adult Americans are doing is to conduct a time use study. A time use study asks people what they do during a typical day or how much time they spend doing different things on a typical day. One of the best sources for time use studies is the time use studies conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  This is a national study of 13,000 telephone interviews first conducted in 2003. The study showed in 2006 : 

 

·         that the average amount of leisure time per week was  5.1 hours for adults 15 and older in 2006.

·         Time spent reading per week for adults 15 and older in 2006: 22 minutes.

·         Time spent watching TV per week for adults 15 and older in 2006: 2 hours and 36 minutes.

So that means that only 7% of the recreation time was spent reading, while 51% of their leisure time was spent watching TV.

 

 

 

 

 The highest amount of time spent reading were for adults aged 75 and older, with over an hour,  and the lowest were for ages 15 to 19, with only 6.6 minutes per week.  This study also showed:

 

• Amount of time spent reading also increases as the education of the person increases.
•  As income increases amount of time spent reading increases.
•  Men spend more time watching TV than women
• Men spend less time reading than women.

 

How does this compare with time use studies in the past? In 1923 Rhey Boyd Parsons did a study of 314 adults in Chicago and found that they read about 93 minutes a day. A similar study conducted in 1930 by William Gary and Ruth Munroe of 100 adults in Hyde Park Illinois, found that adults read on the average 90 minutes a day.

 

 

	Time spent reading per day	Time spent reading job-related	Time spend reading leisure
Parsons Study (1923)	93 minutes reading books, magazines and newspapers	?	?
Gray & Munroe (1930)	90+ minutes	?	?
Sharon (1972)	106 minutes
Mikulecky (1979)	158 minutes	73 minutes	85 minutes
Gallup (2002)	66 minutes
Bureau of Labor Stats (2003)			36.5 minutes
Bureau of Labor Stats (2006)			22 minutes

 

 

76.34% less time reading per day than in 1923.  However, the Parsons and Gray studies did not distinguish between leisure reading and reading for work.

 

 

 

My Study of SOSU Students

In January-February 2008, I conducted a survey via e-mail of the 3584 students of where I work, Southeastern Oklahoma State University. In my survey, I asked the students what kinds of activities that they do. Almost 45% said that they watch TV between 1 to 4 hours a week, while reading books between 30 and 35 % said that they read books between 1 to 4 hours a week. Again, I did not ask them to distinguish between books read for school and book read for pleasure.

Percentage of people who do the following activities per week, by hours

	0 hours	Less than 1	1-4 hours	5-8 hours	9-15 hours	More than 15
Watching TV	7.77	7.77	43.2	25.73	11.17	4.37
e-mailing on Internet	8.29	41.46	36.59	10.73	1.49	0.98
Talking with friends on the Internet	41.87	20.20	22.16	10.34	3.45	1.97
Playing games on the Internet	24.76	16.02	29.12	15.05	10.68	4.37
Reading fiction	31.22	16.10	35.61	7.31	6.34	3.42
Reading non-fiction	33.82	21.26	32.37	8.21	2.41	1.93
Reading religious works (scriptures)	49.27	24.39	19.51	3.9	2.44	0.49
Reading print newspapers	29.61	42.23	22.73	1.46	0.49	0.49
Reading print magazines	33.17	40.49	23.41	1.95	0.49	0.49