The Impact of Gender, Socioeconomic Status and Home Language on Primary School Children’s Reading Comprehension in KwaZulu-Natal

Gabriela Völkel, Joseph Seabi, Kate Cockcroft and Paul Goldschagg
Additional contact information
Gabriela Völkel: Department of Psychology, University of the Witwatersrand, Private Bag X3, Johannesburg 2050, South Africa
Joseph Seabi: Department of Psychology, University of the Witwatersrand, Private Bag X3, Johannesburg 2050, South Africa
Kate Cockcroft: Department of Psychology, University of the Witwatersrand, Private Bag X3, Johannesburg 2050, South Africa
Paul Goldschagg: Department of Psychology, University of the Witwatersrand, Private Bag X3, Johannesburg 2050, South Africa

IJERPH, 2016, vol. 13, issue 3, 1-11

Abstract: The current study constituted part of a larger, longitudinal, South African-based study, namely, The Road and Aircraft Noise Exposure on Children’s Cognition and Health (RANCH—South Africa). In the context of a multicultural South Africa and varying demographic variables thereof, this study sought to investigate and describe the effects of gender, socioeconomic status and home language on primary school children’s reading comprehension in KwaZulu-Natal. In total, 834 learners across 5 public schools in the KwaZulu-Natal province participated in the study. A biographical questionnaire was used to obtain biographical data relevant to this study, and the Suffolk Reading Scale 2 (SRS2) was used to obtain reading comprehension scores. The findings revealed that there was no statistical difference between males and females on reading comprehension scores. In terms of socioeconomic status (SES), learners from a low socioeconomic background performed significantly better than those from a high socioeconomic background. English as a First Language (EL1) speakers had a higher mean reading comprehension score than speakers who spoke English as an Additional Language (EAL). Reading comprehension is indeed affected by a variety of variables, most notably that of language proficiency. The tool to measure reading comprehension needs to be standardized and administered in more than one language, which will ensure increased reliability and validity of reading comprehension scores.

Keywords: reading comprehension; gender; socioeconomic status; language; South Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/13/3/322/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/13/3/322/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:13:y:2016:i:3:p:322-:d:65776

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().