Laura Burns and Freya ReadBooks or technology?

What do children in Year 5 and 7 think about electronic books?

Our research question:

Technology is changing fast. Books are now available in electronic form and we wanted to find out if electronic books were rivalling printed ones and what children’s opinions on them were.

56 participants

o We gave out questionnaires and consent forms to 1 form in Year 5 and 1 form in Year 7.

o We interviewed 9 students, also from Year 5 and 7.

Years 5 and 7

Age range:

9-12

Interviews

Questionnaires

Our Research

Research Ethics

We made sure our research was 100% ethical. Firstly we gained informed consent from all of our research participants. We did this by giving out consent forms with the questionnaire. Additionally, those participants who were involved in an interview completed a consent form.The responses were kept anonymous and confidential, the results were not shared and were only used for the purpose of our research.

InterviewsOur interview questions were:• What do you think about electronic books?• Do you think libraries should have electronic

books to read from and why?• Do you think it is easier to read from a printed

book or an electronic book?• Would you rather buy 100 books or a Kindle with

100 books on it?We expanded on these questions in relation to the answers we were given.

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Thematic analysis of interviews

We used coding to group key points from our interviews into separate sections of information, for example:• Practicality• Long Lasting• System Failures• Cost

Results from interviews: reasons why people like electronic books

Practical (6 responses)

Comfortable(2 responses)

Long lasting(1 response)

The pages don’t fall out

Handy to keep around

You can read any book at any

time

You don’t loose your

page

Lights up

You can enlarge the

text

Results from interviews: reasons why people don’t like electronic books

System failure(11 responses)

Uncomfortable(2 responses)

Cost/value(2 responses)

Waste of money

Battery can run out

Memory can be deleted

Breaks easily

It can damage your eyes

The writing is too small

Results from interviews: reasons why people do and don’t like printed books

Book damage(3 responses)

Aesthetics(3 responses)

Cost/value(1 response) Less tempting

to steal

They take up a lot of space

Pages get stuck together

Smell nice

Impractical(1 response)

100 books Kindle with 100 books Don’t know

Very light

You can read any book at any

time

Easier to carry

Kindles can damage your

eyes

Printed books seem more real

We asked: Would you rather buy 100 books or a Kindle with 100 books on it

and why?

Our

que

stion

naire

This graph shows that 55% of the students we asked prefer electronic books. 70% of Year 7s prefer electronic books however only 42% of Year 5s prefer electronic books.

0 1-2 3-4 5-6 7-8 9-10 10+ ?02468

101214161820

How many times a week do Year 5 and 7 pupils in Lincroft read books and electronic books

Printed bookElectronic book

How many times a week

Num

ber o

f pup

ils

One third of the students never read electronic books and surprisingly 3 children do not read printed books. On average people read printed books about 6 times a week and electronic books about 5 times a week.

Prefer

Don’t prefer

Don’t know

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18

Yr7 Yr5

Number of students

Do you prefer electronic books to printed books?

Don’t know

This bar chart shows a variety of electronic devices that children used. Many of which you can read books on.

ipod

Smartphone

ipad

Computer/laptop

Tablet

Kindle

PS3

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16

Electronic devices used by Year 5 and 7 pupils at Lincroft

Number of pupils

Elec

tron

ic d

evic

es

Games

Social media

Music

Books

Other

No access

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18

femaleMale

What do you mainly use your electronic device for?

This graph shows that electronic devices are mainly used for games, social media and music. Surprisingly relatively few people use them for reading books.

87% of pupils from the Year 5 and 7 classes that we collected data from had access to an electronic device which they could read from.

Strongly agree

Agree

Don’t know

Disagree

Stongly disagree

No answer

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14

The majority of the students we asked agreed with this statement. I we did this research project again we would try to find out more about why this is the case.

Number of children

Also in our interviews we found that 56% of the same pupils found electronic books easier to read from than printed books.

Electronic books encourage you to read more

This is a Likert scale question.

ConclusionWe have analysed our interviews and questionnaires and finally found out the answer to our question: What do children in Year 5 and 7 think about electronic books? The answer is that the majority of people prefer electronic books. There was a small difference between the age groups, with more year 5s preferring printed books. Also, most people felt that electronic books encourage you to read more.

Evaluation

It all went really well and we want to thank Cindy and all of our teachers, especially Mrs Doyle and Miss Smith.

Our Answer

From our research, we found out that 55% of Year 5 and 7 pupils prefer electronic books to printed books.Reasons included:• “They are more practical”• “They are more comfortable to use”• “They last longer”