Reports that the reading comprehension of 14- and 18-year-old students and the volume of reading done by students and adults ranks higher in New Zealand than in the United States or Iran. Suggests that levels of reading achievement for students depend on the reading demands of society. (AEA)

Reports a survey of the reading habits of a national sample of 5067 adults designed to determine what is being read--by whom, for how long, and for what reason--and how reading fits into people's daily activities. (TO)

Finds that reading practices involving books and work documents bore a strong relationship to literacy proficiencies, and that younger adults were more likely to read brief documents for work, while older adults were more avid newspaper readers. Concludes that engaging in a diversity of reading practices is indicative of reading maturity and has…

Investigates whether orthographic processing ability in adults accounts for variance in individual word recognition and spelling skills. Finds that some individual differences in reading and spelling are caused by variation in orthographic processing skills linked to print exposure. (RS)

Analyzes the content of extension bulletins directed to farmers' wives and of their responses to it. Finds that the women generally accepted the recommendations of the "Cornell Reading-Course for Farmers' Wives" (offering an ideal vision of literacy tempered to suit women's life on farms) but valued reading mainly as a diversion from work. (RS)

Summarizes 369 reports of reading research and divides them into six main areas: "Summaries of Specific Aspects of Reading Research", "Teacher Preparation and Practice,""Sociology of Reading, Physiology and Psychology of Reading,""The Teaching of Reading," and "Reading of Atypical Learners." (RB)

Examines the task of locating information in textbook chapters (text search). Finds differences between more efficient and less efficient searchers in how they distribute their time across various aspects of the task. Discovers that as task complexity increases, efficient searchers allocate relatively more search time to initial stages of text…

Maya K. David reports an interesting view of reading in Malaysia through the eyes of graduate student Mohd Nazri bin Hamid (2003), who conducted an exploratory study about the culture of reading in an academy of Islamic studies. The purposes of Nazri's investigation were (a) to examine undergraduate students' reading habits, (b) to offer a…

Reports on five studies which investigated reading for pleasure. Finds that this reading is characterized by within-text reading rate variability, is more arousing physiologically than other waking activities, and gives readers a feeling of control. Also finds that the Fog Index of readability predicts readers' preferences and difficulty rankings.…

Analyzes the relationship between amount of time devoted to leisure reading by Irish elementary school children and a series of personal, home, and school variables. Reports that reading consumed 5.4 percent of available leisure time and that the variables considered accounted for only 22.9 percent of the variation in time in book reading. (MKM)

Examines the association of reading instruction with the amount and breadth of students' reading activities, taking account of social, cognitive, and home factors. Finds that, for students aged 9, 13, and 17, amount of reading was associated with levels of social interaction surrounding reading, cognitive strategies for reading, and…

Examines television's impact on reading and school achievement in terms of the displacement hypothesis (watching television displaces developmental reading activities). Indicates small differences in reading scores for children watching two to four hours a day, but beyond four hours effects are negative and increasingly deleterious. (SR)

Identifies recurrent uses of reading and shared reading activities. Finds no quantitatively significant differences in shared literacy activities between urban and nonurban families in Iceland, a society with a tradition of widespread and prevalent literacy. Demonstrates significant relationships between shared activities and higher educational…

Describes a survey of Israeli high school students to determine the books they considered most impressive in developing national and civic values. Reports that the majority of books selected were fiction and were perceived as very useful in developing national knowledge and less useful in developing civic values. (MKM)

Investigates the relationship of out-of-school activities to reading achievement. Finds a wide variation between children in amount of out-of-school reading. Concludes that reading books was the out-of-school activity that had the strongest association with reading proficiency, but that on most days most subjects did little or no book reading. (MM)