The influence of literary preferences and gender on the reading habits of students in the 5th and 6th grades of primary school

Abstract

This quantitative study proposes the hypothesis that gender influences the reading choices of boys and girls between the ages of 10 and 12. Based on this hypothesis, there are three main objectives: to explore the reasons why students in 5th and 6th grade choose their literary readings; to determine the differences between boys and girls in choosing these readings; and to point out some gender stereotypes that influence these choices. For this purpose, part of a previously designed ad hoc questionnaire was used, to which 2129 students from schools all over Spain responded. The data were analyzed using IBM SPSS 20 statistics software. The results show that some of the reasons why students choose their reading material are: simple lexis, short length, or because they tell amusing stories or with which they identify. Furthermore, there are several differences between boys and girls in their choice of reading material: the font size, the short length, the topic of friendship between boys or the existence of a movie version are important issues for boys, while girls look for references and behavioral patterns as well as identification with the characters in their reading material. Finally, it is confirmed that gender stereotypes have an influence on the literary choices of boys and girls, a finding that is consistent with previous research in this area and confirmed by the present study.