Tackling the drop-off: Understanding the teenage reading experience

The leisure reading habits of teenagers have changed considerably over the last decade, and a teenage drop-off in reading for pleasure has been documented. Such findings have led to an increase in research focused on understanding teenagers' reading activities, however, reading activities are usually measured simply by time spent engaging with different text types (e.g., books, social networking sites, magazines); a more nuanced understanding of teenagers' experiences with these different text types is needed. Different texts offer teenagers different cognitive, social and emotional reading experiences, yet we do not understand teenagers' perspectives of these experiences.

Working with the Scottish Book Trust, a Teenage Advisory Panel (n = 8) will be convened and led by the PhD student to inform and support the research throughout. A mixed methods research study will involve interviewing 45 teenagers (aged 13-16) about their cognitive, social and emotional experiences with different texts. This will help us to gain a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the ways in which different text types offer and foster different reading experiences. Thematic analysis of the interviews will lead to the development of a new theoretical framework; this will inform the design of a questionnaire, administered to a representative sample of ~600 students (aged 13-16), to statistically examine developmental differences in teenagers' cognitive, social and emotional experiences and the relationship between their reading experiences and their reading habits, attitudes and skills.

The project aims to study the widely cited steady decline in teenage reading engagement but from a novel approach - examining developmental differences in teenagers' reading experiences. Working close with the Scottish Book Trust throughout, the research will inform their programmes and resources to support teenage reading and tackle the drop-off. Furthermore, the methodological approach and research findings will have a significant impact on academic thinking and understanding in this area.