Article Review #2

Meskerem Goshime

October 5, 2011

Article Review 2

 Clark, C. and Hawkins, L. (2011). Public Libraries and Literacy. Retrieved October 4, 2011, from http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/assets/0000/7424/Public_libraries_literacy_2011.pdf           

Introduction

This paper reported the results of one part of a large survey regarding young people’s reading and writing.  This report particularly addressed the part of the survey regarding public library use of young people.

The research followed quantitative approach.  It is analytical descriptive survey that showed correlations between several variables.  Even though it cannot prove its existence, it suggests the possibility of casual relationships.

This research is of interest to me because I also plan to use the same methodology to address my research problem, although I also plan to incorporate some exploratory and qualitative methods.  Moreover, the topic of reading among children, which is addressed in this research, is related to my topic of interest.

Problem Statement

The research questions addressed by this report were young people’s use of public libraries with age and background demographics, factors influencing why they use or do not use public libraries with age and background demographics, the link between public library use and their reading behavior, and the link between public library use and their school attainment.

Literature Review

This report did not include literature review on the subject.  However, it certainly is a huge contribution of knowledge on the topic of young people’s reading behavior as it used a very large sample size and assessed a large number of variables.

Method

The sample of this study was 17,089 students aged 8 to 16 from 112 schools in Britain.  The research also considered socio economic background, ethnic background and gender when collecting and analyzing the data.  There was an almost equal gender split in the sample, although there was difference in the number of participants with age group and ethnic background in the sample.

The research used online survey consisting of 32 questions regarding young people’s background, reading and writing behavior, perceived ability and attitudes.  This report especially addressed the questions regarding public library use

Caveats

It is not clear to me from the report how the schools were chosen.  However, it seems that the research involved all students in those schools.  The difference in number of participants with ethnic background seems to reflect the proportion in the population.  However, it is not clear to me why there was a large difference in the number of participants by age group, with majority of participants between ages 11 and 12.  One can imagine that if the sample had an even percentage of participants from all age groups, the total percentage of students who use public libraries might be different.  This especially has significance because the research reported that “public library use declined drastically and significantly with age” and “47.8% of young people surveyed said they do not use the public library at all (Clark, 2011, p. 8).”

Apart from the finding regarding total percentage of children using public libraries, all the other findings in the research appears to be very reliable and I think this research has a huge contribution to knowledge on the topic.