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The current information society requires people to handle information from different sources, which entails specific skills beyond those needed to comprehend and use information from a single text. Given the relevance of becoming a competent reader in functional reading scenarios, it is crucial to examine how contextual‐, task‐, and individual‐related factors may influence multiple‐documents question‐answering activities, a key issue for assessment and instruction. In this study, we examined the influence of text availability and question type in students’ question‐answering performance and the moderator effect of students’ reading skill. Seventy secondary school students read three expository texts about a history topic. Next, they performed a concurrent question‐answering task consisting of a set of intra‐ and intertext questions they answered either with or without the texts available. Finally, participants performed a free‐recall task after a 24‐hour delay without access to the learning materials. Results showed higher performance scores in the intratext questions when the text was available than when it was not. However, the superiority of text availability disappeared in the delayed recall task. Additionally, skilled readers who had the texts available scored higher in the concurrent question‐answering task and, moreover, recalled more ideas in the recall task. These findings shed light on how contextual‐ (i.e., text availability), task‐ (i.e., question type), and student‐related (i.e., reading skill) factors may influence both adolescents’ question answering from multiple documents and their recall. The implications of these findings for the science of reading and the educational practice are discussed.

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This study analyzes the effect of text-inserted questions and post-text-reading questions, i.e., questions timing, on students’ processing and learning when studying challenging texts. Seventy-six freshmen read two science texts and answered ten adjunct questions with the text available, being tested on learning 5 days afterwards. Questions were presented either after reading the whole text or inserted in the text after reading the relevant information. Online processing data were recorded while reading and searching the texts, and measures of processing strategies (i.e., paraphrases, elaborations) while answering the questions were collected. Compared to students in the post-reading condition, those in the inserted condition spent more time reading the text initially, were more efficient at searching for information in the text, and produced more accurate elaborations, all of which may explain why answering inserted questions in an available text were more effective in terms of learning than answering post-reading questions. Limitations and educational implications of these results are also discussed.

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