Page 84 - Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.45, 2019

LI Guihua & LIU Jing / Transition: Adolescents’ hybrid reading in the omnimedia era 083

3.2 Analysis of the classification of young adults based on hybrid reading behavior

Our data shows that there has been a clear tendency towards hybrid reading behavior among
young adults, but there are still differences in the process of transformation. So, what is the
difference between young adults’ hybrid reading behavior? In order to answer this question, this
study used SPSS 22.0 to analyze the sample by using K-Means clustering, and we used RStudio
to calculate the profile coefficient of clustering effect when taking 2 to 10 classes respectively,
and chose the best results which performed both better and meaningful by using F-test
(P<0.001), that is, based on the clustering results of 4 categories which resulted in formation
of a hybrid reading behavior whose differences were more obvious and the number of samples
are more balanced distribution (see Table 2). The variance analysis of the differences between
the four groups of behavioral variables was done, and the ANOVA difference test was used. The
results showed that the sig values were all 0.000, indicating that even the differences in each
group considered, the differences between the four populations in each variable were significant
in general.
Comparing the difference between the mean of the same behavior option of various groups and
the overall mean of the options of our questionnaire, and comparing the mean difference of the
same behavior options between the groups, combining the specific behavior characteristics of each
group, the young readers of the four groups were named as: traditional readers, passive hybrid
readers, standard hybrid readers and high-engaged hybrid readers.
(1) First classification: Traditional readers (about 25%)
The classification consists of young adults who hardly interact with the environment and have
traditional behavior during the whole reading process. Their average behavior in targeting and
reading decisions was 3.24 and 3.59, greater than the overall mean. It indicated that they were
not good at using a variety of channels to obtain reading information and make reading decisions
before reading. As for book acquisition, the mean value of their option about “get book online”
was close to “4-inconformity”, which indicated that their acceptance of digital reading was very
low. Their social orientation at reading averaged 3.52, higher than the overall mean, which showed
their low social orientation. What’s more, the average of social behavior in post-reading stage was
3.79, close to “4-inconformity”, indicating that they also had little social behavior after reading.
In summary, the new environment has no obvious impact on the reading behavior of this kind of
readers, so we name it as “Traditional Readers”. Traditional readers account for about a quarter of
the total sample size.
(2) Second classification: Passive hybrid readers (about 21%)
The average of this kind of readers’ reading performance in reading and post-reading stage is
the second one which is only lower than high-engaged hybrid readers. It means that they have the
characteristics of media compound, behavior compound and value compound in the whole reading
process. It’s worth noting that the average of “get book offline” was 2.46 and “get book online”