Changes in reading comprehension across cultures and over time

More about the book

If asked how much the English, French, Finnish, Hungarian, Italian and Dutch languages had in common, most people might answer „very little“ because language is often regarded as one of the more idiosyncratic aspects of a culture. What then, if someone proposed to undertake a comparative study of reading in those languages? Would the results be meaningful? What could they contribute to the existing body of knowledge? This book seeks to address these questions. Data from eight countries that participated in two large scale studies of reading undertaken by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement in 1970/71 and 1990/91 are analyzed using Linear Structural Relations Analysis, Item Response Modeling and three-level Hierarchical Linear Modeling.