The Effects of Incentives on Students’ Reading Motivation

Edmunds, K. M., & Tancock, S. M. (2002). Incentives: The effects on the reading motivation of fourth-grade students. Reading Research and Instruction, 42(2), 17-37.

Background

The use of incentives, such as food, books, and verbal praise, was found to be prevalent in many language classrooms due to its potential to increase children’s reading motivation. However, little empirical research has been done to examine the effects of incentives, especially books, on students’ reading motivation.

Aims

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of various incentives (i.e., books, non-reading related rewards) on the reading motivation of fourth-grade students.

Sample

The study involved six fourth-grade classes from an elementary school in a mid-size American city in South Carolina. Each treatment group and the control group consisted of two classes taught by the same Language Arts teacher. There were 28 students in the control group who received no incentives, 27 students in the treatment group who received books as incentives, and 36 students in the treatment group who received non-reading related rewards as incentives.

Method

The study adopted a quasi-experimental design and was conducted over a nineteen-week period. Reading motivation was measured at the beginning and the end of the study. The data collected included the participants’ own perceptions on the Reading Survey from the Motivation to Read Profile, their parents’ perceptions on the Parent Survey concerning the reading motivation of their child, and the number of books read by the participants themselves.

Findings

Results gathered from the Reading Survey and the Parent Survey suggested that the use of books and non-reading related objects as incentives did not significantly affect the participants’ value of reading, self-concept as readers, or total reading motivation. Likewise, the use of incentives did not impact the amount of reading done by the students as measured by the total number of books read. In other words, there was no significant difference in the reading motivation between the treatment groups and the control groups as measured by the Reading Survey, Parent Survey, or the number of books read.

Implications

The authors proposed the need for teachers and administrators to rethink the time, effort and money invested in providing incentives for students to read. They also urged educators and researchers to explore the effectiveness of other classroom activities (e.g., teacher book talks, book sharing sessions between peers) on students’ reading motivation.

Original article retrieved from Taylor and Francis.