A meta-analysis study about the factors influencing reading habits of the students

The aim of this research is to obtain a general idea about the factors affecting students' reading habits by using the meta-analysis method. For this purpose, studies that provide information about the factors affecting reading habits were included in the scope of the research by scanning the master's and doctoral theses written at the national level and the researches published in peer-reviewed journals between the years 2005-2021. In the scanning process, the words "reading, reading habits, factors affecting reading" were used as keywords. While TÜBİTAK ULAKBİM, Google Academic search engine, Dergipark and Ebsco databases were used to find scientific articles to be included in the research, theses in the National Thesis Center of the Council of Higher Education were used to reach graduate theses. In the research, studies that will help to determine the extent to which gender, class, place of residence, economic conditions, and education level of parents affect reading habits of the students were examined. Certain criteria were used in making choices about which studies to include in the meta-analysis. These were followings; the studies conducted between 2005 and 2020, the studies are prepared in Turkish, the studies having mean and standard deviation values, and the studies normally distributed. The effect sizes of a total of 60 studies, including 46 articles and 14 master's theses, which met the inclusion criteria, and the overall effect sizes of these studies were calculated. In the study, sample numbers, arithmetic averages, standard deviation, p and t values of the studies were used to calculate the meta-analytic effect analysis. The statistical significance level of the studies was accepted as p=0.05. Since the effect size distribution has a heterogeneous feature, the random effects model was used. As a result of the research, it was concluded that the rate of having reading habits is higher for female students in terms of gender factor, for those who have a library according to the factor of having a library, for those who have a bachelor's degree according to the educational status of the parents, and for the students with a high family income according to the family income factor.