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| Table 1 | |||
| How often do you read comics? |
| chapter 1: | |||
| always | sometimes | never | |
| boys | 25% (35) | 57% (81) | 18% (25) |
| girls | 1% (2) | 44% (71) | 55% (88) |
| middle class: | |||
| always | sometimes | never | |
| boys | 19% (26) | 64% (89) | 17% (24) |
| girls | 5% (8) | 50% (77) | 44% (31) |
Results
Inspection of the data revealed that in both schools boys were much more involved in comic book reading than girls; in fact, about half of the girls in both samples indicated that they never read comic books (table1) and very few read them "always." The difference between boys and girls was statistically significant in both samples (sample I: chi square = 64.171, df = 2, p < .001; sample I: chi square = 9.289, df = 2, p < .01). We thus restricted our analysis to the boys, as the girls' responses would not produce enough variability to reveal relationships between comic book reading and other variables.
A recent survey (Comic Shop News, 1994) produced similar results. Out of 2838 replies to a voluntary poll, 93.8% were from males. Readership of Comic Shop News and willingness to respond to such a poll is a good indicator of strong interest in comic book reading.
There was no significant difference in frequency of comic book reading between the two schools (chi square = 1.711, df = 2).
Comic Book Reading and Reading for Pleasure:
For boys in both groups, more comic book reading was strongly associated with more pleasure reading (table 2; for chapter 1, chi square = 14.922, df = 4, p < .01; for middle class, chi square = 18.912, df = 4, p < .001).
| Table 2 | |||
| How often do you read for pleasure? |
| chapter 1: | |||
| daily | weekly | monthly/never | |
| heavy comic book readers | 54% (19) | 34% (12) | 11% (4) |
| occasional comic readers | 40% (32) | 28% (23) | 32% (26) |
| non comic readers | 16% (4) | 20% (5) | 64% (16) |
| middle class: | |||
| daily | weekly | monthly/never | |
| heavy comic book readers | 65% (17) | 27% (7) | 8% (2) |
| occasional comic readers | 35% (31) | 35% (31) | 30% (27) |
| non comic readers | 33% (8) | 17% (4) | 50% (12) |
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