Does students’ exposure to websites moderate the positive relationship between print exposure and text comprehension?

In this study, I investigated the print exposure and website exposure of undergraduates in relation to their scores on a text comprehension test. Print exposure was measured with a national version of the author recognition test, whereas a new website recognition test was developed to measure studen...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inReading & writing Vol. 37; no. 8; pp. 2151 - 2171
Main Author Strømsø, Helge I.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.10.2024
Springer Nature B.V
Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers
Subjects
Attitudes
College students
Comprehension
Education
Factor Analysis
Higher education
Internet
Language and Literature
Linguistics
Literacy
Neurology
Psycholinguistics
Reading Attitudes
Reading preferences
Recognition
Social factors
Social media
Social Sciences
Students
Websites
Text comprehension
Print exposure
Undergraduates
Website exposure
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Summary:In this study, I investigated the print exposure and website exposure of undergraduates in relation to their scores on a text comprehension test. Print exposure was measured with a national version of the author recognition test, whereas a new website recognition test was developed to measure students’ exposure to texts on the internet. The participants’ reading attitudes and number of years in higher education were included as control variables. Exploratory factor analysis suggested that three factors are measured by the website recognition test: (1) lifestyle topics; (2) news and culture; and (3) social activity. The results showed that only print exposure predicted text comprehension significantly and positively, but not for students with a high score on the website recognition test. Moderation analyses indicated that the pattern was clearest for the social activity factor of the website recognition measure. Hence, high activity on social media seems to diminish or remove the positive relationship between print exposure and text comprehension. The results confirm that print exposure relates positively to important aspects of students’ literacy, while further studies should be carried out to investigate the potential negative relationship between website exposure and literacy.
ISSN:0922-4777
1573-0905
DOI:10.1007/s11145-023-10468-6