Reading and well-being report

Mental wellbeing, reading and writing

Added 26 Sep 2018

Mental wellbeing, reading and writing explores the relationship between children's mental wellbeing and their reading and writing enjoyment, attitudes and behaviours.

The report is based on findings from our eight Annual Literacy Survey of 49,047 children and young people aged 8 to 18 in the UK.

As this is the first time we have explored the link between reading, writing and mental wellbeing, we developed two new measures to enable us to better understand these relationships:

• Mental Wellbeing Index: we quantified children's responses to questions on life satisfaction, coping skills and self-belief on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is the highest level of mental wellbeing.
• Literacy engagement score: we quantified children's responses to questions on how much they enjoy reading and writing, how often they read and write outside school, what they think about reading and writing, and how good children think they are at reading and writing. Scores were then given out of a total of 52, where 52 is the highest level of engagement with literacy practices.

Our analysis found that:

• Children and young people who are the most engaged with literacy have better mental wellbeing than their peers who are the least engaged (Mental Wellbeing Index scores of 7.9/10 vs 6.6/10)
• Children who are the most engaged with literacy are three times more likely to have higher levels of mental wellbeing than children who are the least engaged (39.4% vs 11.8%)
• Conversely, children who are the least engaged with literacy are twice as likely to have low levels of mental wellbeing than their peers who are the most engaged (37.4% vs 15%)
• Children with above expected reading skills are three times more likely to have high levels of mental wellbeing than their peers with below expected reading skills (40.3% vs 13.1%)
• As children transition from primary to secondary school, their levels of literacy engagement and mental wellbeing both begin and continue to decline
• Boys who are the most engaged with literacy have higher levels of mental wellbeing than girls who are equally engaged (Mental Wellbeing Index scores of 8.1/10 vs 7.6/10)

The report also includes new analysis from University College London which shows an enduring relationship between mental health and verbal scores, with those who have low verbal ability having worse mental health outcomes than those with higher verbal ability. This finding is true when one considers children from the 1970 British Cohort Study as well as children from the more recent Millennium Cohort Study.

National Literacy Trust. (2018). Mental wellbeing, reading and writing. London: Author. https://literacytrust.org.uk/research-services/research-reports/mental-wellbeing-reading-and-writing/

Teens' favorite social media

According to a recent report, among UK and US teens, YouTube is seen as the coolest social network (followed by Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, and Snapchat). The report was based on data from a survey of 7,890 Internet users in the United States and 8,010 Internet users in the United Kingdom, age 16-64.
GlobalWebIndex. (2015). GWI Social. London: Author.
 http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2015/27790/the-coolest-social-network-with-teens#ixzz3cIXsAvNK

Digital vs. print media reading and gender

Girls have more firmly embraced digital literacy and formats such as Facebook, email and text message, while boys are more comfortable with traditional printed media such as comics, manuals and newspapers, according to a study published by the National Literacy Trust.
The snapshot – based on responses from 32,000 pupils at more than 130 schools in the UK – found that girls continue to outpace boys in their enthusiasm for reading outside school at all age levels, with black girls in particular showing a prodigious appetite for literature.
Girls studying for GCSEs, for example, were more likely to read emails and social network sites than boys of the same age – and were also more likely to read fiction, suggesting that the growth of digital media has not diminished the popularity of literature.
Boys studying for GCSEs were more likely than girls to read print products such as comics, with 38% saying they read newspapers at least once a month compared with 30% of girls of the same age.
Overall, boys reported lower levels of enjoyment from reading than their female peers, according to the figures compiled by the trust. Boys also tended to read less often and think less positively about reading than girls did.
National Literacy Trust. (2015). Children's and young people's reading in 2014. London: National Literacy Trust.
http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/research/nlt_research/6646_childrens_and_young_peoples_reading_in_2014

Reading for pleasure impact study

Children who read for pleasure are likely to do significantly better at school than their peers, according to research from the Institute of Education in the UK. The study found that readers made more progress in math, vocabulary, and spelling between the ages of 10 and 16 than those who rarely read. Researchers found that reading for pleasure was more important for children’s cognitive development between ages 10 and 16 than their parents’ level of education. combined effect on children’s progress of reading books often, going to the library regularly and reading newspapers at 16 was four times greater than the advantage children gained from having a parent with a degree. Children who were read to regularly by their parents at age 5 performed better in all three tests at age 16 than those who were not helped in this way.
Alice Sullivan and Matt Brown. (2013). Social inequalities in cognitive scores at age 16: The role of reading. London: Centre for Longitudinal Studies.
http://www.cls.ioe.ac.uk/news.aspx?itemid=2740&itemTitle=Reading+for+pleasure+puts+children+ahead+in+the+classroom%2C+study+finds&sitesectionid=27

Reading study

'Sullivan and Brown studied the performance of several thousand children in the UK on a variety of tests given when they were 16, and analyzed the effect of a number of predictors on their test scores using multivariate techniques.'...Their main finding was that 'more reported pleasure reading of books at ages 10 and at age 16 was significantly related to scores on vocabulary, spelling and math tests given at age 16. The vocabulary and spelling results are consistent with those of  many studies.' ... 'Access to books and libraries can counter the negative effects of poverty on literacy development." ... 'Sullivan and Brown point out that their analysis found that the students' own reading was a significant predictor even when reading proficiency measured at ages 5 and 10 was controlled .... This suggests "that the positive link between leisure reading and cognitive outcomes is not purely due to more able children being more likely to read a lot, but that reading is actually linked to increased cognitive progress over time." We first don't learn our skils and then use them for reading. Rather, our literacy development is the result of reading." (excerpted from S. Krashen's review at http://tinyurl.com/m4z3wub)


Sullivan, Alice and Brown, Matt. 2013. Social inequalities in cognitive scores at age 16: The role of reading. London: Centre for Longitudinal Studies,
Institute of Education, University of London    
www.cls.ioe.ac.uk

Media and children's behavior study

A long-term study group in Britain that has been following 19,000 children born in 2000 and 2001, found that those who watched more than three hours of television, videos or DVDs a day had a higher chance of conduct problems, emotional symptoms and relationship problems by the time they were 7 than children who did not. The study, of a sample of 11,000 children, found that children who played video games — often age-appropriate games — for the same amount of time did not show any signs of negative behavioral changes by the same age.
Center for Longitudinal Studies. (2013). Millennium Cohort Study. London: Author.
http://www.cls.ioe.ac.uk/page.aspx?&sitesectionid=851&sitesectiontitle=Welcome+to+the+Millennium+Cohort+Study

School Libraries and literacy report

In order to support the UK's School Library Commission's evidence base, this paper explores what young people actually think about school libraries.
Christina Clark (2010) Linking School Libraries and Literacy : Young people's reading habits and attitudes to their school library, and an exploration of the relationship between school library use and school attainment. National Literacy Trust http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/assets/0000/5760/Linking_school_libraries_and_literacy_2010.pdf

Preschool impact study

Study: British preschool enhancements may not improved skillsBritish policies to bolster preschool education have had no effect, according to a study of 35,000 children. Children enter school with no more vocabulary, counting or shape-identification skills than they did before the preschool push began six years ago, the study asserts. BBC (8/28)