MULTIPLE INDICATORS OF CHILDRENS READING HABITS AND ATTITUDES - CONSTRUCT-VALIDITY AND COGNITIVE CORRELATES

Sixty-three 5th-grade children completed daily-activity diaries indicating how they spent their nonschool time for 15 days. From these diaries, estimates of the minutes per day that were spent in various activities were derived. The estimate of book-reading time from the activity diary correlated with new measures of individual differences in exposure to print that use a checklist-with-foils logic and that have very brief administration times. Both diary-estimated and checklist-estimated book reading predicted a variety of verbal outcome measures, but estimates of television watching did not. Multiple regression and factor analysis confirmed the convergent and discriminant validity of a construct argued to be best conceived of as nonschool print exposure that appears to be measured as well by the checklist tasks as by the activity-diary method. In contrast, certain types of questionnaire methods of assessing reading habits and attitudes appear to assess the extent of general positive attitudes toward reading rather than the degree of print exposure itself.