Dissertations and Theses @ UNI
Availability
Open Access Thesis
Keywords
Reading--Ability testing; Reading comprehension;
Abstract
This study examined the relationship between students' performance with worksheet tasks and story questions when used to elicit understanding of causal relationships. Additionally, performance of good and poor readers on these tasks was compared. The subjects for this study were 73 fourth-grade students from two midwest public schools. Students were designated as either highor low-achieving readers by their scores on the Reading subtest of the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills. Descriptive statistics and instrument reliabilities using Cronbach's alpha were obtained. A Pearson product moment correlation matrix for the tasks also was computed. Subjects' performance on worksheet tasks was also compared with their performance on the two levels of question tasks. In order to determine differences on task performances by groups and tasks, scores were made comparable by dividing each subject's task score by the total possible task score. A two-way repeated measures analysis of variance was computed with group a between-subjects variable and task a within-subjects variable. Differences among means for the tasks were tested for significance at the .05 level. Dunn's multiple comparison procedure (Kirk, 1968) was used to determine differences among adjusted task means when overall statistical significance was obtained. Descriptive and reliability statistics obtained for the tasks indicated that the questioning task was of a lower reliability than the worksheet tasks. Moderate relationships were found between subjects' performance on the worksheets; however, the relationships found between the questioning task and the worksheet tasks were low. The questioning task consisted of questions written at two levels. The relationships between the subordinate questions and three of the worksheet tasks were statistically significant at the .05 level. No correlations were found between the superordinate questions and the worksheet tasks. The ANOVA measure revealed statistically significant differences between group performance as well as between tasks. Type of task was found to interact with group to affect task performance. When comparing group mean discrepancies under the various task conditions two at a time, one stable difference was found at the .05 level of significance. Poor readers' performance was closer to good readers' performance on the questioning task than on one of the worksheet tasks. Interpretation of the data analyses leads to the conclusion that typical basal reader cause-effect comprehension tasks elicit distinctive patterns of performance. These patterns fall into three categories: identifying elements, matching elements, and answering questions.
Year of Submission
1987
Degree Name
Master of Arts in Education
Department
Department of Curriculum and Instruction
First Advisor
David W. Moore
Second Advisor
Barry J. Wilson
Third Advisor
Sharon Arthur Moore
Date Original
1987
Object Description
1 PDF file (66 leaves)
Copyright
©1987 Mary Monica Cassidy
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Cassidy, Mary Monica, "Relationships Among Tasks Designed to Elicit Causal Understanding in Reading" (1987). Dissertations and Theses @ UNI. 2305.
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/etd/2305
Comments
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