Reflection: Young Adult Reading Survey

Hey readers!

One of the projects we did this semester was to create a survey for young adults about their reading habits.  We had to decide on what we wanted to find from the young adults we were surveying.  For me, I wanted to know how young adults find their reading materials.

So I created a survey consisting of ten multiple choice answered questions and five short sentence questions.  These questions ranged from how frequently the youth visited a library or bookstore to whether or not their friends read.  I then distributed it among a group of 10 young adults at my local youth group.  These teens ranged from 7th grade all the way to 12th, and were pretty evenly a mixture of guys and girls.

I then compiled their responses and wrote a paper, exploring what I learned from their responses.  Here are some of the most important things I took away from this experience:

~ Always be prepared for teens to give you answers that don't relate to the questions.  I had quite a few answers that were off the wall from what I asked.

~ Teens like it when books are suggested to them in a very specific manner.  This came up quite a few times as well.  A lot of the youth told me that when I'm suggesting books, I should gear it towards the teen.  So for example, one told me to tell them "You would like this book" instead of "I really liked this book".

~ Many teenagers use the internet to find books.  Popular sites include Google, Amazon, and through friends on social media.

~That being said, not one of the teens I surveyed uses Goodreads.  (You guys remember this site?)  I found that surprising.

I plan on using the results from this survey to help in my future classroom.  I want to get my students involved with Goodreads so they can see that I'm reading and to also help them find new books.  I'm going to keep my bookshelves open to my students, and when I make recommendations, I will always gear them towards my students.  I also think that in the future, I may word my survey differently so that I can get more detailed responses.

Overall, I found that this experience was great.

~Meaghan