The Young People's Reading Project

About the research project

The Young People's Reading Project(this link will open in a new window) aimed to understand why many young people feel less motivated to read for pleasure during their teenage years.

A panel of young people from three schools in Scotland worked with us on the project. Teagan, Harry, Emily, Ava, Hannah and Sofia helped us work out the best ways of working directly with young people and to understand what their priorities are for research in this area. Together, we conducted interviews with over 45 teens in Scotland about their reading habits and about what helps them feel more or less motivated to read books in their free time. This study of teenage reading motivation is one of the first of its kind to use insights from teenagers themselves and will significantly impact this area of academic research.

The findings from the project are helping to guide the development of our programmes and resources for teenagers and informing our approach to encouraging more young people to continue reading throughout their teenage years and beyond.

What did we find out?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there was some overlap between the things teenagers said stopped them reading books and the things they thought could motivate them to read more. Not all of these were the same for all teenagers; some talked about one thing in particular which stopped them reading or which made them feel more motivated to read, while others talked about multiple, overlapping things.

The key factors which teens in this project said affect their reading motivation and engagement were:

• Access – being reliably able to physically access books in different formats and genres
• Choice – having the skills and experience to successfully choose books they’re likely to enjoy
• Autonomy – feeling in control of what, when, why and how they read
• Social – connecting with others about books
• Relatable messaging – receiving information about books (e.g. recommendations, potential outcomes from reading) that is relevant to them
• Environment – having comfortable and distraction-free spaces to read in
• Time – being able to fit reading into busy schedules

You can read more about the barriers to teens reading for pleasure and motivating factors for encouraging teen reading in our summary articles. 

At the bottom of this page, you can also download a guide to all the findings, which contains ideas from teachers and librarians on how to address each of the factors outlined above. 

Partners

The project is a collaboration between Scottish Book Trust, the University of Edinburgh(this link will open in a new window) and the University of Dundee(this link will open in a new window), funded by SGSSS(this link will open in a new window).

Futher reading

• Webber, C., Wilkinson, K., Duncan, L. G., & McGeown, S. (2024) Working with a young people’s advisory panel to conduct educational research: Young people’s perspectives and researcher reflections. International Journal of Educational Research, 124. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2023.102308(this link will open in a new window)
• Webber, C., Wilkinson, K., Duncan, L. G., & McGeown, S. (2023b) Adolescents’ perspectives on the barriers to reading for pleasure. Literacy. https://doi.org/10.1111/lit.12359(this link will open in a new window)
• Webber, C., Wilkinson, K., Duncan, L. G., & McGeown, S. (2023a) Approaches for supporting adolescents' reading motivation: Existing research and future priorities. Frontiers in Education, 8. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2023.1254048(this link will open in a new window)
• Webber, C., Wilkinson, K., Duncan, L.G. & McGeown, S. (2022) Connecting with Fictional Characters: The Power of Books. Frontiers for Young Minds, 10. https://doi.org/10.3389/frym.2022.658925(this link will open in a new window)