There appears to be a dramatic decline in attitude toward reading between 2006 and 2011 for ten year-olds taking the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) examination. This ‘decline’, however, is probably not real but is the result of a change in the attitude questionnaire, mentioned only in the fine print in the 2011 PIRLS publication. The scoring of the 2011 version of the questionnaire was profoundly influenced by students’ report of outside school reading; the scoring of the 2006 version was not.
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