Influence of Attitude to Reading on Comprehension Performance Among Secondary School Students in Katsina Central, Nigeria

Abstract

This study investigated the influence of Attitude to Reading on Comprehension Performance among Secondary School Students in Katsina Central, Nigeria, the study has three research objectives, three research questions and tested three null hypotheses. A descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study and a simple multistage sampling technique was used to select a sample size of 600 students from a population of 22,911 SS II students of secondary school students in Katsina Central, Nigeria. Two Instruments namely, Reading Attitudes Questionnaire (RATQ) and The Reading Comprehension Performance Tests (RCPT) were used. the reliability coefficient of 0.763 and 0.712 for RATQ and RCPT respectively. Null hypotheses were tested at P ≤ 0.05 levels of significance using multiple regression, Analysis of variance (ANOVA), and t-tests. The result shows that secondary school students’ attitude to reading accounted for 0.05% of the total variance in comprehension performance (R square = .005, P>0.05). Therefore, there is no significant influence of secondary school students’ attitude to reading on their comprehension performance in Katsina Central, Nigeria. Results further revealed that there is significant difference in the comprehension performance of male and female secondary school students in Katsina Central, Nigeria (t-value= .460 & p-value= >0.05). Results also indicated that respondents are statistically different in comprehension performance this implies that, there is significant in the comprehension performance of secondary school students in Katsina Central, Nigeria based on class sections (Arts, Science & Commercial classes). Finally, some recommendations were made, which include, Parents should be sensitive to their role as role models in recreational reading. They should exhibit positive attitude to recreational reading and encourage their children to read beyond prescribed school texts in order to boost their academic performance, so that, they can acquired the needed competences for them to contribute to the general development of the society.