“Read Much?”—“Depends. Who Wants to Know?”: A Closer Look at Time as One Possible Parameter to Quantify European Reading Habits

Abstract

ABSTRACT Reading is the topic of many surveys throughout Europe. Despite plenty of data on reading habits available, the comparison of these individual results between countries is often obstructed by the different methodological approaches applied. While the aim of the majority can be said to have the top-level question—“How much do our people read?”—in common, each of the survey designs represents a different answer to the question “How can we measure this?” This heterogenous field of survey designs is a consequence of the fact that from country to country, the organizations initiating surveys have different professional backgrounds: Whether it is governmental institutions, associations in the book trade, or NGOs, this has an impact on the choice of parameters. A brief look at some numbers available about the “time spent on reading” illustrates this correlation.