Bookstart Around the World 1
Bookstart Around the World state how much they re
ad with their children. A risk with this, however, is that parents may understate or exaggerate the facts because many are aware that reading is something that they ‘should’ do, which could lead to them providing socalled sociallydesirable responses. This is discussed often in the studies and is taken into account. One way of avoiding this problem is to follow Berg’s (2015) example, where parents participating in the study were asked to point to the covers of books they were familiar with on a chart that contained only a certain number of real book covers. In this way, they were able to get a better indication of how many books children had been exposed to in the home. There are other ways of collecting empirical data than selfassessments from parents, but they are more resource intensive, which is an obstacle. Regarding the large number of studies on the Reach Out and Read programme, most of them indicate that the programmes are effective. In a systematic overview, Needlman and Silverstein (2004) examined the methodological problems and possible biases. Amongst other things, they investigated whether there was a socalled publication bias, i.e., that studies showing positive effects from the programme were more frequently published than those that showed no effect or a negative result. Of the unpublished drafts that they analysed, there was only a small proportion that showed no effect or a negative result from Reach Out and Read, so they found no risk for such a bias. Another challenge is that statistical analyses often have fairly small sample sizes, which causes some difficulty in generalising the results. The studies are often conducted in limited cities or areas, which is highlighted in the literature as a challenge. Longitudinal studies have also been few in number, and are therefore in demand (Carpenditier 2013; Needlman, 2004). It is both practically challenging and difficult to isolate the effect of a bookgifting programme itself, since a large number of variables need to be taken into consideration during a child’s upbringing. Overall, it appears to be challenging to adequately measure the effects of bookgifting programmes. Something that was highlighted in interviews and studies is that it is important that evaluations of these programmes should not be too onesided. Additionally, the significance of highlighting different aspects of the effects of the programmes and language development in young children is emphasised. It is well known that it is difficult to measure some things. Literacy development occurs through social processes and during interactions between children and adults, which makes it difficult to capture such developments using quantifiable indications. Placing too much importance on what can be measured can mean that important aspects of the social process that is language development can be missed. This can, in turn, lead to bookgifting programmes being developed on the basis of a onesided description of effects, which can consequently result in programmes that are not appropriate for their purpose. On the other hand, it would undeniably be a shame if the tools were not developed to display the important impact of bookgifting programmes on language development in children. Rather, the issue is likely to be regarding the amount of time and resources that local Bookstart projects should spend on this themselves. There may be reason to make careful consideration before a large number of small attempts to make impact assessments are launched by the Bookstart initiatives themselves, which is something that is also highlighted in the evaluation of Bokstart (the Swedish Arts Council, 2020). It is both difficult and time consuming to carry out such studies, especially longitudinal ones. 36/52