Page 81 - Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.45, 2019

080 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.11, 2019

Back to Reading Process”, excavating the representative activities of reading in the three stages,
and drawing up the typical reading behavior variables of each stage, and formed the first draft
of the questionnaire, and then carried out two rounds of pre-survey to evaluate the suitability of
the questionnaire capacity and the typicality of the behavior variables. After optimization, the
final questionnaire which consists of 52 questions had two main parts: the first part investigated
personal background information, including gender, age, reading frequency, single reading
duration, and reading preferences; the second part investigated reading behavior performance at
all stages, from the overall behavior, pre-reading (including targeting behavior, reading decision-
making behavior, reading object acquisition behavior), reading (including independent behavior
and social orientation), and post-reading (including independent behavior and social behavior).
In view of the fact that extracurricular independent reading is more representative of the
influence of young adult reading behavior by the media environment, this study limits “reading”
to extracurricular reading, including the paper and electronic versions of books, periodicals and
magazines that anything was read outside the classroom. The questionnaire is designed by using
the Likert-5 Metrics.

2.2 Sample and sample structure

The survey targeted young adults aged 11-25 years old (Zhang, 2008), and distributed
questionnaires in a combination of online and offline methods, covering 21 provinces,
municipalities and autonomous regions.
This survey began in January 2018 and lasted four months, collecting 2,897 online questionnaires
and 1,057 off-line questionnaires, a total of 3,954 and 3,185 valid questionnaires after elimination.
Among these samples, 21.0% were males 24.6% were females aged 11-15 (early in adolescence
age), while 21.2% were males and 33.3% were females aged 15-25 (late in adolescence age) (see
Table 1). The distribution of gender and age is close to equilibrium, which means that this survey
might have strong representation.

Table 1. Sampling distribution
Age/Gender Male Female Count
Count 668 783 1,451
11-15 years old
Percentage 21.0% 24.6% 45.60%
Count 673 1,061 1,734
15-25 years old
Percentage 21.1% 33.3% 54.40%
Count 1,341 1,844 3,185
Count
Percentage 42.1% 57.9% 100.0%