A Content Analysis on Articles Related to Reading Skills

Abstract

This study aims to examine the articles related to the reading skills written between 1990 and 2013. In line with this general purpose, articles related to the reading skills were examined published in twenty-nine national journals in the field of educational sciences and indexed by SSCI (f=5), ULAKBIM (f=13) and other (f=11) databases in Turkey. 232 articles were reached in total and examined using the “Reading Skills Papers Classification Form” (RSPCF) in accordance with the subjects, years, number of authors, universities, number of hypotheses, research methods and patterns, data gathering tools, samples, and data analysis methods. The data gained from this research was coded by using the SPSS 17.0 software package and analyzed with the content analysis method. Frequencies and percentages were used as descriptive statistical methods for analyzing the data. Results of this research revealed that most of the articles (48; 20.6%) were written about reading comprehension; articles usually had a single author (59.9%) and a hypothesis was tested (39.2%); survey method a non-experimental quantitative research method, was used for the majority (43.5%); attitude and perception tests etc. were the most frequently used data gathering tools (28.1%); middle-school students (28%) were preferred as samples; sample size was usually between 101-300 (27.2%) and the random sampling method (44.4%) was used; and a quantitative descriptive analysis method, frequency/percent (18.3%) method as data the analysis method, was preferred most frequently.