Literacy skills and online research and comprehension: struggling readers face difficulties online

Abstract

The present study evaluated the extent to which literacy skills (reading fluency, written spelling, and reading comprehension), together with nonverbal reasoning, prior knowledge, and gender, are related to students' online research and comprehension (ORC) performance. The ORC skills of 426 sixth graders were measured using a Finnish adaptation of the Online Research and Comprehension Assessment. Results of a structural equation model showed that these ORC skills were divided into six highly correlated factors, and that they formed a common factor in ORC. Altogether, these predictor variables explained 57% of the variance in ORC. Reading comprehension, along with gender, was the strongest predictor for ORC performance. In addition, reading fluency and written spelling explained ORC variance over and above reading comprehension. These findings suggest that struggling readers probably face difficulties online.

ORCA.IT: A New Web-Based Tool for Assessing Online Reading, Search and Comprehension Abilities in Students Reveals Effects of Gender, School Type and Reading Ability

“…Specifically, performance on Version 1 is explained by general non-verbal reasoning, prior knowledge on the topics, offline text reading comprehension, attention (especially concentration) and memory skills. This is totally consistent with what reported in published studies about the predictors and components of online reading skills (Cromley et al, 2010; Tarchi, 2010; Snowling, 2013; Kanniainen et al, 2019). A different explanation is probably necessary for the results of the regression analysis for Version 2, where linguistic difficulty seems to have been central to performance, and may also have biased the reliability and internal consistency of the results.…”

“…A final interesting issue in literacy research is gender-related differences. Several studies showed an advantage for girls in reading fluency and reading comprehension (Logan and Johnston, 2009, 2010; Torppa et al, 2018) and similar patterns have also been observed in other studies on Online Reading Comprehension (Forzani, 2016; Salmerón et al, 2018; Kanniainen et al, 2019). McKenna et al (2012) reported that middle school girls have more positive reading attitudes toward reading print texts for recreational as well as academic purposes, while their attitudes toward reading digital texts are better for academic purposes, but not for recreational purposes.…”

“…Similarly, in a study on Singapore secondary school students (Wu, 2004), male students performed better in graph reading, female students in graph construction, whereas no gender differences were found in graph interpretation and evaluation. While a general advantage for males in online reading performance cannot be documented due to the very little difference found in our sample (with marginal statistical significance), it can rather certainly be excluded that a general advantage for females (described for instance by Kanniainen et al, 2019 or Forzani, 2016) can be found in the Italian school system when accessing and using digital information. This, following Jang and Ryoo’s (2018) suggestions, might reflect a less positive attitude toward digital media in Italian girls, even for academic purposes (different, in this case, from both North-European and Asian female students).…”

“…Following the previous literature, other factors may concur to reading comprehension, specifically, Snowling (2013) suggested that students with low verbal and non-verbal reasoning skills are more likely to have comprehension difficulties. Non-verbal reasoning has been shown to have direct and indirect effects on reading comprehension (Swart et al, 2017) and, in line with this, Kanniainen et al (2019) found that non-verbal reasoning contributed independently to the variance of Online Reading Comprehension performance.…”

“…However, Coiro (2011) found that even though prior topic knowledge played an important role in online research and comprehension performance of students with low online reading skills, it did not influence the performance of students with high online reading skills. Moreover, Kanniainen et al (2019) found that the relationship between prior knowledge and Online Reading Comprehension was not significant.…”