Bookstart Around the World 1
Bookstart Around the World grammes, funding depen
ds on local circumstances and priorities. The fact that books are given away at child healthcare services is related to the goal of reaching out to all families, since the vast majority go to medical checkups. 3.7.2 Evaluation and research Part of the help that the Bookstart organisation provides to local programmes consists of a handbook. This handbook contains support and advice on how a Bookstart programme can be effectively implemented, and includes examples from the organisations. It also provides guidance on how local programmes can work in evaluating Bookstart. Suggestions are given regarding data that can be collected from and by the various parties, including both quantitative and qualitative aspects; for example, the number of book gifts, followup activities and similar details can be collected. The qualitative aspects could be the opinions of parents and other parties. The central organisation also provides a number of different templates for conducting reviews and survey forms that can be directed to organisations or parents. Support is also given in the administrative evaluation and following up on users. Bookstart has been evaluated on several occasions, and positive results are indicated.7 Bookstart Japan has conducted two of these. The first evaluation was aimed at parents and their impressions of Bookstart, and the second was directed at municipalities and involved the organisation of Bookstart. These evaluations showed that parents appreciate participation in Bookstart and the gifted books themselves. The evaluation also shows that parents use the books and consider reading to be important. Almost 90 percent of these parents stated that they had used or use the books frequently. A similar proportion agreed that it was good to see their children’s interest in stories, and that the book gift could be an important tool for communicating with their children in the future. However, the evaluation that was directed at municipalities revealed considerable differences in the number of books that were given away and indicated that there were differences in how much municipalities invest in their Bookstart programmes. It thus seems that the results from Bookstart are good, because parents appreciate and use the books. From a methodological perspective, however, it should be mentioned that internal evaluations of an organisation’s own activities run the risk of making overestimations or underestimations. Additionally, other studies show that families who participated in Bookstart seem to be more likely to read about how to read with a child, that fathers read more with their children, and that library visits increase (Hashimoto, 2012). One observational study from Bookstart sessions in Japan shows that children interact with the reading in different ways (Tsuji, 2013). This can also be connected with gender and reading habits at home. Although this study cannot demonstrate a link between language development in children and participation in Bookstart, the author argues that participation can have a positive effect on the reading habits of parents in the home, thus promoting children’s language development in the long term (Ibid.). 3.8 The various programmes All bookgifting programmes have a national organisation that is responsible for providing administrative support, dissemination of knowledge, and logistics etc. They are often nongovernmental organisations that promote reading, such as BookTrust in the United Kingdom or the German Reading Foundation. 7. The evaluations from Bookstart Japan have been summarised in the interview, since the material is only available in Japanese. 20/52