Reading enjoyment in the digital age: How does it differ by parents’ education, self-expected education, and socio-economic status?

ABSTRACT: While reading enjoyment has been found to differ by gender and major, little is known about how students’ enjoyment in reading across multiple-modality differs by their parents’ education, self-expectation of highest education attainment, and socio-economic status (SES). This study aims to explore how undergraduate students of different parents’ education background, self-expectation of highest education, and family SES enjoy reading from different modalities or modes. The respondents in this study were 993 undergraduate students in an Indonesian university. Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analyses were used to examine the structure of reading enjoyment. Subsequently, t-tests and Anova were conducted to find out if there are differences in student’s enjoyment by their parents’ education, self-expectation of highest education attainment, and SocioEconomic Status (SES). An interesting pattern of relationships emerged with respect to father’s education, student’s self-expectation of their highest education, and SES. The paper is concluded with implications for future research on the psychological meaning of reading enjoyment.