Indicator 12. Change in Students' Time Spent Reading for Enjoyment

In every G-8 country reporting data in 2000 and 2009 except Japan in 2000, a greater percentage of 15-year-old females than males reported reading for enjoyment.

PISA asked 15-year-old students to report how much time they usually spend reading for enjoyment. Students were given the response option of "I do not read for enjoyment" along with several response options indicating various amounts of time (ranging from "30 minutes or less a day" to "more than 2 hours a day"). Using data from PISA 2000 and 2009, this analysis compares male and female students who reported not spending any time reading for enjoyment with those who reported spending at least some time reading for enjoyment.

One way to look at these data is to compare the percentage of students in each country who reported reading for enjoyment by sex and year. In both 2000 and 2009, the percentage of 15-year-old males and females in the Russian Federation who reported reading for enjoyment—75 and 86 percent, respectively, in 2000, and 71 and 87 percent, respectively, in 2009—was higher than that of their male and female counterparts in all other G-8 countries with data reported¹⁴ (figure 12-1). Among males in the G-8 countries, the percentage of students who reported reading for enjoyment was lowest in Japan and Germany in 2000 (45 percent in both countries) and lowest in Germany and the United States in 2009 (45 and 47 percent, respectively). Among females in the G-8 countries, the percentage of students who reported reading for enjoyment was lowest in Japan in both 2000 and 2009 (45 and 58 percent, respectively). A second way to look at these data is to examine the male- female difference in the percentage of students in each country who reported reading for enjoyment, by year. In almost all G-8 countries reporting data in 2000 and 2009, a greater percentage of 15-year-old females than males reported reading for enjoyment (figure 12-1 and table 12-1). In Japan, there was no measurable male-female difference in 2000. With the exception of Japan in both years, male-female differences ranged from 11 percentage points in the Russian Federation to 25 percentage points in Germany in 2000 and from 16 percentage points in the Russian Federation to 27 percentage points in Germany in 2009 (table 12-1). In the United States, the male-female difference in reading enjoyment was 18 percentage points in 2000 (50 percent of males vs. 68 percent of females) and 22 percentage points in 2009 (47 percent of males vs. 69 percent of females).

A third way to look at these data is to examine countries by differences over time in the percentage of students who reported reading for enjoyment, separately for males and females. In Japan, the percentage of students who reported reading for enjoyment was 9 percentage points higher for males and 13 percentage points higher for females in 2009 than in 2000. In France, however, the percentage of students who reported reading for enjoyment was 8 percentage points lower for males and 9 percentage points lower for females in 2009 than in 2000. In the Russian Federation and Italy, the percentage of males who reported reading for enjoyment was 4 and 8 percentage points lower, respectively, in 2009 than in 2000, while in Canada, the percentage of females who reported reading for enjoyment was 5 percentage points higher in 2009 than in 2000.

Definitions and Methodology

In PISA, "15-year-olds" refers to students who are between 15 years and 3 months old and 16 years and 2 months old at the at the time of the assessment and who have completed at least 6 years of formal schooling. The computations presented in the text and in table 12-1 were carried out using unrounded numbers; therefore, they may differ from computations made using the rounded numbers that appear in figure 12-1.

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¹⁴ Although the United Kingdom participated in PISA in 2000, low response rates prevent its results from being included.