Reading has always been a source of knowledge, intelligence, and critical thinking, which is an essential element of a contemporary human being. However, books, articles, and other publications seem to be replaced by social media, TV series, and cinema. People tend to spend their free time besides a computer or smartphone with a massive flow of messages, posts, and useless information. Nevertheless, it might be supposed that with aging, a person starts dedicating himself or herself to various readings more. Such an assumption seems a relevant theme to investigate and conduct research on. In this paper, a research design for this investigation will be proposed.
The study will be designed as an experimental one – participants of different age groups will be given a certain amount of readings for one month. It will be claimed that it is important to read a minimum of 100 pages; no maximum limit will be set. After this period, to measure the results, the approach that will be applied is self-reporting because a questionnaire will be provided (Kail and Cavanuagh, 2015). The questions will be as follows; the first one will be “How much reading have you done during the past month?” The second question will be “Was the given time enough to consume all the readings?” The last one, “Was it a pleasure for you to take part in such an experiment?” The participants will be free to give as long answers as they want, so it would be easier to define their attitude to the experiment process. This is necessary to determine their fitness for reading and even their acceptance of the thought about it.
It seems apparent that the independent variable will be the age of the participants. Then, the dependent variable will be the number of pages read, as well as the extent of satisfaction of taking part in the experiment. It should be mentioned that the research will have several limitations. An exact quantity of answers may be invalid as some participants can give them being affected by bias to reading, especially the ones of young age. Nevertheless, it is expected to involve at least 120 participators, 30 for each sampling – childhood, adolescence, early and middle adulthood, and late adulthood.
Some ethical considerations are also expected – it will be vital to explain the aims of the experiment explicitly and coherently. Each participant should be acquainted with his or her role and what will be asked to do. After the above is explained, participators will be requested to give written permission of using the results of the study publicly; of course, their anonymity will be respected. For those under the age of majority, this permission will be asked from their guardians.
To conclude, the primary expected outcome of the study is to determine whether age is a substantial factor within the scope of reading or not. Given the fact that it is a crucial element of human development, the described above research design seems relevant and appropriate. Furthermore, the extent to which the character of readings is affected by age might also be defined as their range will be broad – starting from scientific studies and ending with short novels. All the ethical considerations will be addressed; thus, both the conductors and participants of the experiment will benefit from it.
Reference
Kail, R. V., & Cavanuagh, J. C. (2015). Human development: A life-span review (7th ed.). Cengage Learning.