Leisure time reading is often stimulated in primary and secondary school, because of its expected benefits in language and reading development. In this thesis, a meta-analysis was performed to...Show moreLeisure time reading is often stimulated in primary and secondary school, because of its expected benefits in language and reading development. In this thesis, a meta-analysis was performed to examine the relationship between reading behaviour and receptive vocabulary, expressive vocabulary, combined vocabulary and reading comprehension in primary and secondary school students. A total number of 30 studies (4.769 students) were included. As expected, a medium to large effect was found for all four outcome measures. This is in line with results from previous research. Since girls happen to read more and more often than boys, it was expected that gender would be a significant predictor of the effects. This hypothesis was not confirmed in this meta-analysis. This may be explained by the fact that the reported gender percentages in the respective studies were not similar to the actual gender distribution in the final analyses. Researchers sometimes reported that participants were excluded in the analysis of our variables of interest, without stating the exact number of boys and girls. Overall, this study confirms that reading plays a positive role in acquiring vocabulary and reading comprehension.Show less
