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Department of Educational Sciences and Psychology

Innovative method for surveying books in the household

Die vier Webinarleiterinnen während des digitalen Meetings und der englische Titel Rethinking Research on Books © IFS ​/​ TU Dortmund

Using photos to study the impact of home libraries on children's academic achievement.

In the webinar “Rethinking Research on Books at Home” on September 17, the organising scientists presented an innovative method for data collection from their research. In a publication project, IFS Professor Birgit Heppt, together with researchers Anna Volodina from the Institute for Quality Development in Education (IQB), Patricia Iglesias from the Research and Expertise Centre for Survey Methodology at Pompeu Fabra University Barcelona and Melanie Revilla from the Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals in Barcelona, is investigating the question of how the number and type of books at home affect children's success at school. The researchers drew on data collected as part of the project “WEB DATA OPP: New opportunities to enhance or extend (mobile) web survey data and get better insights”. The project is funded by the European Research Council.  
The number of books at home is usually recorded using questionnaire items, which are subject to various methodological limitations. In particular, it remains unclear how accurately respondents can estimate the number of books. In the WEB DATA OPP project, however, respondents used their smartphones or tablets to photograph the books in their households. This should enable a more accurate survey. The newly developed Webdata Visual software was used for this purpose. A web survey was conducted in June 2023 to test the practicability of the photo software, to check the quality of the image data collected in comparison to conventional questionnaire items and finally to analyse the significance of the number of books for school success. A total of 1202 Spanish households with children of primary school age took part in this survey. The ongoing analyses indicate that the number of children's books in particular proves to be significant for school performance. The following link provides further insights into the ongoing study: https://open-research-europe.ec.europa.eu/articles/3-202