Page 86 - Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.45, 2019

LI Guihua & LIU Jing / Transition: Adolescents’ hybrid reading in the omnimedia era 085

was 3.77. There is a very clear gap which means that their preference for paper reading was
obvious, and their acceptance of digital reading was low. In reading-related social behavior, the
mean of offline behavior was more than online behavior, which indicated that this kind of people
were still more willing to use traditional channels to communicate after reading.
We believe that although such young adults have hybrid reading behaviors, their thinking is still
conservative, so they were named as “passive composite readers”. The proportion of this kind of
young adults is just over one in five.
(3) Third classification: Standard hybrid readers (about 32%)
This classification mainly refers to the young adults who interact with the environment and
exhibit hybrid behavioral characteristics in all three reading stages. The average of pre-reading
behavior of these young adults was 2.74, second only to high-engaged hybrid readers, indicating
that they were able to access reading information better by using a variety of channels. Unlike
passive hybrid readers, the difference in the mean of their online access to e-books and offline
access to paper books was only 0.12, far lower than the passive hybrid readers of 1.31, which
indicated that they had a strong acceptance of e-book reading, and they liked both e-books and
paper books. As for post-reading stage, the difference in the mean of online behavior and offline
behavior was only 0.31, which was far lower than the passive hybrid readers. It showed that they
read more balanced of social behavior in post-reading stage, giving consideration to both online
and offline behavior.
We named them “Standard Hybrid Readers” since the reading behavior of this classification
obviously has three characteristics of hybrid reading. This kind of readers have the largest number
of these groups, accounting for nearly one-third of the population.
(4) Fourth classification: High-engaged hybrid readers (about 22%)
This classification consists mainly of young adults who interact actively with the environment
throughout the reading process and have a large number of offline and offline behaviors in all
three reading stages. The average of their behavior performance throughout the stage was below
the overall mean, indicating that they understood new media tools, and were able to use a variety
of channels to obtain reading information. They also had a strong social orientation and had more
online and offline social behavior than other three classifications. Therefore, we named them
“High-engaged Hybrid Readers”. The proportion of this kind of young adults is just over one in
five.

4 Analysis of the patterns of young adults hybrid reading behavior in the
omnimedia era

4.1 Analysis of reading behavior in different classifications

The four young adult classifications that have emerged provide us with an opportunity to observe