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Becoming a Reader: Significant Social Influences on Avid Book Readers

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Understanding how social influences can foster avid book reader identification is a key research goal that warrants further investigation beyond a limited early-years lens. The author’s 2015 International Study of Avid Book Readers (ISABR) explored, as one of its key research questions, the influence positive social agents can have on avid book readers, relying on the retrospective reflections of respondents from a range of countries and supporting quantitative data to explore this research focus. Early influences were examined, with data suggesting that maternal instruction is the most prevalent source of early reading teaching. Most respondents (64.3 percent) were the recipients of positive influence from a social agent. Indirect avid reader influence, author influence, fostering access, shared social habit, reading for approval, recommendations and supporting choice, and exposure to reading aloud were recurring mechanisms of influence. The multiple mechanisms of influence identified constitute opportunities for engagement and subsequent intervention by literacy advocates, including librarians.
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... We analyse the sociodemographic patterns of self-identified readers of books, i.e., the particular group of people who identify themselves as readers notwithstanding skills or number of books read. Thus, we have a shared premise with Merga (2017) as we authorise the participants to define for themselves whether they are readers of books or not. With this self-identification as a starting point, we analyse the significance of different sociodemographic variables in relation to our participants' reading activity and access to books. ...
... There is a vast range of definitions of readers and reading in the existing literature (see e.g., Ross et al., 2018, 139-140), and our study especially touches on so-called avid readers or committed readers, terms that are used diversely in reading research (see e.g., Ross, 1999;Ross et al., 2018;Stebbins, 2013;Wilson & Kelley, 2010). The approach that we apply here emphasises people's own determination over the amount or frequency of reading: readers are perceived as those who are inclined towards reading books and who subjectively experience being readers (see Merga, 2017;Nolan-Stinson, 2008). In contrast, a key component of being an avid reader can also entail reading frequently or consuming large numbers of books. ...
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