Electronic Media vs. Paper: Effect on Teenagers' Reading Comprehension

Overview

Objectives/Goals The goal of this experiment was to determine if electronic media or paper produced better reading comprehension for current-day eighth graders. Methods/Materials Students were randomly assigned to one of two groups. Each group read the same two science-related articles, one on a Chromebook laptop, and the other article on paper. Statistical evaluation used normalized scores to remove any potential effect of differences in difficulty between the two articles. Results This study determined that there was no statistically-significant difference in students' reading comprehension scores between paper and screens, with a p value of 0.98. Conclusions/Discussion The students that were tested grew up with technology, and have been accustomed to reading on electronic media since they were young children. It was concluded that this familiarity with technology likely caused them to outperform adults when compared with previous research. Future experiments are recommended to confirm this conclusion.

Awards (1)

• First Place

Competition history

• CSEF 2016 Behavioral & Social Sciences · Entry J0421

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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