University of Oslo Workshops June 29-30 Conference July 1-3 ...

1 July
16:00-18:00
Room: AK 2137
Chair: Marjeta Doupona Horvat
Discussant: Petra Lietz
Track B PIRLS - Session 3
Examining Trends in Reading Performance
Trends in Reading Literacy from 1970 to 2006 - A Comparison of 9-10 Year
Olds in Sweden, Hungary, Italy and the USA
Monica Rosén, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Rolf Strietholt, Dortmund University of Technology, IFS, Germany
The main purpose of the study is to estimate reading achievement for the youngest IEA
population, i.e. 9-10 year-olds on a common reading literacy scale that stretches over five
IEA studies of reading achievement. The studies are the 1970 Reading Comprehension
study, the 1991 Reading Literacy study and its repeat in 2001, the first PIRLS in 2001 and
the latest PIRLS in 2006. Selected from the IEA databases are the four countries that
participated in all of these reading studies, that is Sweden, Hungary, Italy and the USA. All
available bridges between the reading tests were used, including some national extensions
in the Swedish data from 1991 and 2001. A two parameter IRT-model were used to
estimate and establish a common scale for all the reading tests. However, due to the
reported multidimensionality in the RL91-test two scales were computed, one that included
the so called document-items and one without. Mean achievement were computed for
grade 3 and/or 4 in each country depending on the countries choice of sample in each
study. Preliminary results indicate that the level of reading literacy has increased since
1970 in all countries but Sweden regardless of grade. The discussion of the results focus
upon two aspects of comparability that both have implications for the interpretation. The
first is specific to this study and concerns the construct validity of the common scale. The
other is more general and concerns the difficulty to obtain comparable groups, which is a
necessity for valid comparisons of results.
Keywords: 35-year trend; reading literacy; 9-10 year olds; IRT-matrix design;
A Close Reading of Reading Comprehension among Swedish Students in
Grade 4
Caroline Liberg, Uppsala University, Sweden
A slight decrease in Swedish students’ reading ability has recently been shown in national
as well as international reading tests, e.g. PIRLS 2006. It is thus of great importance to
refine the knowledge of what type of reading comprehension Swedish students at the four
different levels of the international benchmarks are able to carry out. This is therefore the
overall purpose of this study. Another purpose is to create a theoretical framework and a
method for keeping track within a qualitative perspective of changes in students’ reading
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