Reading habits by gender in new students entering the psychology department, Mexico

Abstract

The aim of the research was to identify the reading habits by gender in new students entering for the Psychology Degree in the Tejupilco Professional Academic Unit of the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico during the period 2018A. The population consisted of 176 students of both sexes, who come from rural, semi-urban and urban areas, with ages ranging from 17 to 19 years. The study was descriptive with a nonexperimental transactional design (Rojas, 2006). To identify reading habits, reading habits (CHL) structured and valid questionnaire was applied from which a Cronbach alpha of 0.859 was obtained. Subsequently, the information collected and organized was analyzed and processed with the package. A total of 75% of the population were women and 30% were men; 16, 59 and 25% of the students were from the the city, the municipal head, and the rural community, respectively; for students, 19, 62 and 19% came from the city, the municipal head and the rural community, respectively; 43% of women and 62% of men did not read a book per year, respectively and 75% and 60% of women and men, respectively, did not receive a gift book per year, 42% and 81% of women and men, respectively never visited the library to read,66% and 62% of women and men are not happy when they read, respectively; 42% and 81% of women and men, respectively read to learn, 75% and 81% of women and men, respectively spent less than one hour reading in a week, 83% and 100% of women and men, respectively spent less than one hour per day reading, 84% of female students and 40% male students sometimes read the books recommended to them by their teachers, 100% of the students commented that the teachers took into account the extra class readings as a score in their grades, 47% and 81% of the women and men, respectively read in silence, 58% and 81% of women and men, respectively read aloud sometimes and finally 67% and 81% of women and men read and did not make summaries, respectively. New female students with a bachelor’s degree in psychology have better reading habits with respect to students, and this difference is due to the social context where they live and their family’s economic level.

Keywords:

Reading habits, students, university, psychology, CHL.