Capturing the Ways We Read

Testing the validity of a self-report scale, author recognition test, and book counting as measures of lifetime exposure to print fiction

“…We opted for a single-item scale for three reasons, namely the lack of validated multi-item self-report questionnaires of fiction exposure, a shortage of resources to pilot a new multi-item instrument, and the previous successful application of a bespoke single-item self-report scale in a study with older adults by Payne et al ( 2012 ) . The first issue turned out to be moot, since Kuijpers et al ( 2020 ) developed the Reading Habits Questionnaire to assess fiction and non-fiction exposure. This questionnaire was published after the planning stage of the current study (end of 2019/beginning of 2020) and we were not aware of it until after data collection was completed.…”

Poetry-elicited emotions: Reading experience and psychological mechanisms.

“…By virtue of it being widely used for several decades, the Author Recognition Test (Martin-Chang & Gould, 2008; Stanovich & West, 1989) would seem to be the most likely candidate for measuring which genres people read most often. However, the recently developed Reading Habits Questionnaire (Kuijpers et al, 2020) stands out as a more promising choice. This questionnaire measures not only the frequency with which people read a list of genres, but also to what extent they enjoy reading them and how absorbed they are when reading them.…”

“…By virtue of it being widely used for several decades, the Author Recognition Test (Martin-Chang & Gould, 2008;Stanovich & West, 1989) would seem to be the most likely candidate for measuring which genres people read most often. However, the recently developed Reading Habits Regression Coefficients for the Relationships Between Reading Experience (i.e., the Longest Time Reading Poetry) and Emotion Intensity, as Carried by Poetry-Related Empathy, Visual Imagery, Movement Imagery, Auditory Imagery for Words, and Auditory Imagery for Sounds Questionnaire (Kuijpers et al, 2020) stands out as a more promising choice. This questionnaire measures not only the frequency with which people read a list of genres, but also to what extent they enjoy reading them and how absorbed they are when reading them.…”

Paths to transformation across contemporary reading practices: The role of motivations and genre preferences.

“…The survey consisted of several sections presented in the following order: (a) a section on general reading habits, asking them about reading frequency with all three reading practices, and whether or not they engage in creative writing; (b) a section on genre preferences, in which we presented them with the adapted RHQ (M. M. Kuijpers et al, 2020) asking them to fill it in twice, once for their engagement with their condition's specific medium in mind (books, digital fiction, or Wattpad) and once across media (including films, games, TV, theater, visual arts); (c) a section on motivations for reading where we presented the participants with an adapted version of Oliver and Raney's Motivations for Entertainment Consumption scale ( 2011); (d) a section on perceived transformation, in which we first asked the participants whether they had a reading experience (with either a book, a piece of digital fiction or a Wattpad story) in the last couple of years that had a significant impact on them and if yes, whether they could elaborate on that experience. For the analyses in the present article we only used their response to the yes or no question (the qualitative data is analyzed in a different article (Loi et al, 2023a); (e) in case participants responded yes to the previous question, they were asked to fill in the Story World Absorption Scale (M. M. Kuijpers et al, 2014) and four questions on Storyworld Possible Selves (Hakemulder, 2015, adapted for the purposes of this study with reference to Martínez, 2014) with their chosen text in mind; (f) a quasi-experimental section in which participants were asked to read two short extracts from a novel by Milan Kundera, presented in randomized order, and were asked to rate their appreciation of the excerpts and write down their immediate responses to the excerpts; and (g) a section on demographics, where we asked about their age, gender, whether or not they were native English speakers, and in which language they read the text they referred to in the survey.…”

“…For comparing genre preferences in such varied reading practices, we developed a transmedia-conscious approach to thematic genres, using an adapted version of the Reading Habits Questionnaire (RHQ; M. M. Kuijpers et al, 2020). Although inevitably losing some nuance, this approach allows for a systematic comparison that would not be possible when considering all the specific subgenres of each reading practice.…”