Determinants of high school students’ digital reading flow experience: an experimental study
ISSN: 0264-0473
Article publication date: 5 January 2023
Issue publication date: 2 February 2023
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore the influence of information presentation conditions on the flow experience of digital reading for high school students.
Design/methodology/approach
Firstly, a survey determines the preferred reading medium and the types of texts that high school students frequently read. Secondly, Experiment 1 focuses on the effects of the text type and reading medium on flow experience and reading comprehension. Finally, Experiment 2 addresses a narrative text presented on a smartphone, and discusses the influence of advance organizer, presentation format and page layout on flow experience and reading comprehension.
Findings
In digital reading, the narrative text has a stronger flow experience than explanatory text; the flow experience of reading narration on smartphones is more evident than on computers. The advance organizer and text combined with pictures are more conducive to a flow experience when a smartphone is used as a reading medium. From the perspective of reading comprehension, scrolling is more suitable for reading text combined with pictures and paging best suits pure text.
Originality/value
Through experimental methods, this study reveals the influence of information presentation conditions on the digital reading flow experience, which is a meaningful and innovative topic. The findings can provide more enlightenment and reference for the design and promotion of digital resources and digital reading by teenagers.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by the Humanity and Social Science Youth Foundation of the Ministry of Education (16YJCZH067). Special thanks to Yifan Peng for translating and proofreading the manuscript. We sincerely thank the reviewers, editors and all participants for their contribution to the improvement of this study.
Data availability statement: All data underlying the results are available as part of the article, and no additional source data are required.
Conflict of interest: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Authors’ contributions: All authors conceived the study. Jingjun Chen designed the study and revised the paper critically. Xiwen Tang completed the writing of the article and performed data analysis. Yuan Xia drafted the article and collected data. Shangfei Bao and Jianting Shen mentored the work and revised the paper.
Citation
Chen, J., Tang, X., Xia, Y., Bao, S. and Shen, J. (2023), "Determinants of high school students’ digital reading flow experience: an experimental study", The Electronic Library, Vol. 41 No. 1, pp. 45-62. https://doi.org/10.1108/EL-05-2022-0117
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited