Individual-Environment Correlates of Children's Reading Performance

Abstract

An interactionism framework was used to examine relationships between reading performance and measures of intellectual ability and school-related attitudes for children from different family environment backgrounds. Data were collected from 900 Australian families. Each family had an 11-yr.-old child and the analyses related to those children (458 boys, 442 girls). Regression surfaces were constructed from models that included terms to account for possible linear, interaction, and curvilinear associations among the variables. The findings showed the possible complexity of relationships between children's reading performance and individual-environment variables. The study indicated that, although the identification of alterable environment variables is an important task for increasing our understanding of the variation in children's reading performance, it is also necessary to consider such measures in association with children's individual characteristics.