Nihayra Leona is uitgeroepen tot winnaar van de UvA Psychology Research Master Thesis Prize 2014!

Haar project had als titel: Application of the Theory of Planned Behavior to Low-Achieving Adolescents’ Reading Behavior in Different Reading Contexts

Supervisors: Patrick Snellings, Amos van Gelderen and Mariska Okkinga

Abstract

Low-achieving students are at risk of becoming aliterate. This is partly because of problems with the acquisition of reading skills, but also because they lack the will to read. In this study the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) was used to identify psychological factors that might influence low-achieving students’ reading motivation and behavior separately. We made a distinction between three contexts: reading at school, reading fiction during leisure time and reading informative texts during leisure time. A total of 532 students completed a TPB-based Reading Motivation Questionnaire (TPB-RMQ) measuring the TPB-constructs: cognitive attitude, affective attitude, perceived behavioral control, social norm, past behavior and intention. Of these students 196 also kept a reading diary for seven days in order to measure behavior. The data were analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). First, the original TPB-model and four expanded versions of the TPB were fitted to the TPB-RMQ-data in order to find the best TPB-model explaining reading motivation per reading context. Next, reading behavior was included in the model. The results indicated that TPB-constructs influencing motivation might not be influential anymore when also behavior is considered next to motivation. In addition, the TPB as presented in the literature is not applicable to all reading contexts. Thus, to change both low-achieving students’ reading motivation as their reading behavior, one should take reading context into account.

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