Journal of Educational Psychology

2004, Vol. 96, No. 2, 324 336

Copyright 2004 by the American Psychological Association

0022-0663/04/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/0022-0663.96.2.324

Does the Influence of Reading Purpose on Reports of Strategic Text

Processing Depend on Students Topic Knowledge?
Ivar Brten

Marit S. Samuelstuen

University of Oslo

Norwegian University of Science and Technology

The authors examined whether the influence of reading purpose on reported use of text-processing
strategies was moderated by students prior knowledge about the topic of the text. Using multiple
regression analyses with interaction terms, they found that the effect of reading purpose on reported use
of memorization and elaboration strategies depended on students level of topic knowledge. For
participants who read for the purpose of discussing text content, reported use of memorization and
elaboration was positively related to topic knowledge, whereas no relation between reported use of such
strategies and topic knowledge was found for participants who read for the purposes of test taking or
summary writing. This suggests that students flexible use of text-processing strategies may depend on
their topic knowledge.

may be most relevant, with this information often termed conditional knowledge (Paris, Lipson, & Wixson, 1983). One important
aspect of the reading task is the persons understanding of the goal
of or purpose for reading, with several researchers emphasizing
that readers often construct purposes for their reading that may
guide or constrain their processing of text (see, e.g., Goldman,
1997; Narvaez, 2002; Pressley, 2000). In particular, Pressley and
Afflerbachs (1995) review of think-aloud studies indicated that
accomplished readers are aware of their goals in reading and use
text-processing strategies flexibly to try to meet those goals.

In this study, we examined the influence of reading purpose on

different types of strategies that students reportedly used for learning from text. In addition, we examined whether this influence was
moderated by students prior knowledge of the topic of the text.
Text-processing strategies are forms of procedural knowledge
that readers deliberately use for acquiring, organizing, or transforming information, as well as for reflecting on and guiding their
own text-based learning (Alexander, Graham, & Harris, 1998;
Weinstein & Mayer, 1986). There is evidence, both correlational
(see, e.g., Alexander, Murphy, Woods, Duhon, & Parker, 1997;
Crain-Thoreson, Lippman, & McClendon-Magnuson, 1997; Deegan, 1995; Magliano, Trabasso, & Graesser, 1999) and experimental (see, e.g., Brown, Pressley, Van Meter, & Schuder, 1996; Hart
& Speece, 1998; Palincsar & Brown, 1984; Trabasso & Bouchard,
2002), that the use of deeper level strategies falling in the categories of organization, elaboration, and monitoring is linked to better
remembering and understanding of text. For example, Pressley and
associates (e.g., Woloshyn, Willoughby, Wood, & Pressley, 1990;
Wood, Pressley, & Winne, 1990) have shown that elaboration that
makes students attempt to generate explanations for text content
through the use of relevant prior knowledge improves their performance substantially. Likewise, reading research has established
that students who use strategies to assess whether or not they
understand and who take appropriate steps to solve whatever
problems they detect succeed in text-based learning (for reviews,
see Afflerbach, 2002; Baker, 2002)
However, being a strategic reader is not only a question of
knowing different text-processing strategies. More important,
readers need to know in relation to what tasks different strategies

Reading Purposes and Text-Processing Strategies

Lorch, Lorch, and Klusewitz (1993) found that college students
were able to distinguish between four types of school reading and
six types of out-of-school reading (i.e., reading by personal
choice). When students were asked to describe their text processing in relation to the different reading types, they clearly distinguished between school reading and personal choice reading in
regard to processing demands, with school reading being perceived
as less enjoyable and much more cognitively demanding than
reading by personal choice. Moreover, students perceived reading
in preparation for an examination to be different from the other
types of school reading. Specifically, exam preparation reading
was perceived to be slower and to involve more rereading, memorization, attention to details, thinking, testing of understanding,
and use of supports than other school reading tasks. It should be
noted that Lorch et al. investigated only how students perceived
processing demands to vary across different reading tasks that they
did not actually perform. Presumably, when students are asked to
report on their strategy use in the context of recently performed
reading tasks, self-report methods may provide more valid information about their ability to modify text-processing strategies
according to reading purpose (cf. Pintrich, Wolters, & Baxter,
2000).
More recent empirical support for the idea that students use of
text-processing strategies is influenced by their purpose for reading is largely based on studies that contrast the maximally dis-

Ivar Brten, Institute for Educational Research, University of Oslo,

Oslo, Norway; Marit S. Samuelstuen, Department of Education, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway.
Authors are listed alphabetically; both contributed equally to this article.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ivar
Brten, Institute for Educational Research, University of Oslo, Box 1092
Blindern, N-0317 Oslo, Norway. E-mail: ivar.braten@ped.uio.no
324

READING PURPOSE AND STRATEGIC PROCESSING

tinctive purposes of reading in preparation for an examination and

reading for entertainment (Linderholm & van den Broek, 2002, p.
1086; Narvaez, van den Broek, & Ruiz, 1999; van den Broek,
Lorch, Linderholm, & Gustafson, 2001). For example, Narvaez et
al. (1999) found that college students with an examination purpose
were more likely to engage in rereading and evaluation of the text
and to report knowledge-based coherence breaks (i.e., provide
statements about their inability to understand because of lack of
experience or knowledge) than were students with an entertainment purpose. Also, van den Broek et al. (2001) found that college
students reading expository text for the purpose of exam preparation focused more on coherence building (generated more backward/explanatory and forward/predictive inferences) than students
with an entertainment purpose. In addition, students with an exam
preparation purpose more often paraphrased and repeated text
information. In contrast, students reading for the purpose of entertainment more often monitored their comprehension and produced associations and evaluations than did students with an exam
preparation purpose. Linderholm and van den Broek (2002) reported that college students reading expository text for the purpose
of exam preparation more often paraphrased and tried to connect
text information than did students with an entertainment purpose,
whereas students with an entertainment purpose produced more
associations and evaluations as well as more elaborative inferences
than did students with an exam preparation purpose.

Study-Related Purposes and Text Processing

Despite the evidence that students may process texts differently
when reading for the very distinct purposes of exam preparation
and entertainment, there has been little systematic attention to
whether students alter their text processing in accordance with
different study-related purposes. However, Ignacio and CrainThoreson (2000) used think-aloud methodology to investigate the
text-processing strategies used by college students as they read
with different study purposes in mind. It was found that students
who were instructed to read a study text to understand its meaning
but expected no exam produced more think-aloud comments reflecting a simple knowledge-telling approach than students expecting an essay exam. However, there was no effect of exam expectation on the number of think-aloud comments reflecting a more
sophisticated knowledge-transforming approach. Ignacio and
Crain-Thoresons study thus indicated that students who do not
expect to be held accountable for learning from a text may be more
likely to process the text superficially than students who read in
preparation for a test. Moreover, when Brten and Strms (2003)
recently examined the text-processing strategies of Norwegian law
students reading self-selected study texts, they found that when
students changed their understanding of the reading purpose from
reading to keep up with lectures to reviewing for the examination,
they increased their use of elaboration and monitoring in the form
of comprehension confirmation but decreased their use of memorization and monitoring in the form of problem detection and
problem solving.
Thus, empirical knowledge about how reading purpose influences the use of different types of strategies during reading is still
limited. In particular, the question of how different study-related
purposes may influence students text processing needs to be
addressed more systematically. Students are often instructed to
read for a range of academic purposes, for example, to prepare for

325

an upcoming test, to discuss text content with others, or to write a

summary of the text, and such purposes may also be so distinctive
that students are able to adjust their reading strategy use accordingly. In addition, most existing evidence on the effects of reading
purpose on strategic activity is based on adult accomplished readers. Because different study-related purposes are emphasized in
school well before students enter postsecondary education, investigations of the potential influences of such purposes should include younger readers than the college or university students who
have typically participated in prior research.

Reading Purpose Effects May Differ Across Strategies

and Texts
It is also important to examine whether reading purpose may
affect different categories of strategies (e.g., memorization, elaboration, organization, and monitoring) differently and whether its
effects may be limited to certain types of expository text. For
example, one possible outcome of an investigation of the ability to
adjust text-processing strategies to fit study-related purposes is that
strategies such as elaboration and monitoring may be equally
important regardless of purpose. After all, both types of strategies
may seem essential when the fundamental goal is understanding of
text. However, one could expect that readers who read in preparation for a test requiring memory for text would rely more on
memorization than readers with other study-related purposes and
that readers who read with the purpose of generating a text summary would rely more on organization than readers with other
study-related purposes. In regard to text types, recent studies in
this area (e.g., Linderholm & van den Broek, 2002; Narvaez et al.,
1999; van den Broek et al., 2001) have typically used informational magazine texts, and there is thus a need to examine the
effects of reading purpose on expository text processing with more
authentic study texts located in students textbooks. In the present
study, we wanted to examine these issues by assessing the extent
to which 10th-grade students reportedly adjusted different types of
strategic activity according to different study-related purposes
during the reading of an authentic social science text.

Individual Differences in Reading Purpose Effects

Another important issue concerns how the ability to modify
processing according to reading purpose may differ across individuals. In a recent study, Linderholm and van den Broek (2002)
showed that readers ability to adjust text-processing strategies to
reading purposes may be a function of working memory capacity.
Specifically, readers with low working memory capacity were
found to emphasize less demanding strategies (e.g., repetition)
over more demanding strategies (e.g., monitoring) to a greater
extent than readers with high working memory capacity when
reading for the purpose of exam preparation. However, even
though working memory capacity is a cognitive-processing factor
affecting reading behavior (Just & Carpenter, 1992), no other
individual-difference factor exerts more influence on what students understand and remember than the knowledge they possess
(Alexander & Jetton, 2000, p. 290).

Prior Knowledge and Text-Processing Strategies

The prior knowledge brought by the reader to the text may
influence text-processing strategies regardless of reading purpose

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BRTEN AND SAMUELSTUEN

(see, e.g., Afflerbach, 1990; Alexander et al., 1997; Lundeberg,

1987; Wyatt et al., 1993). Several studies have indicated that more
knowledgeable readers use more deeper level strategies than less
knowledgeable readers, for example, mental summarizing, elaboration on main ideas, reflection on reading (Alexander et al.,
1997), explaining (Chi, Feltovich, & Glaser, 1981; Chiesi, Spilich,
& Voss, 1979), analysis (Lundeberg, 1987; Wineburg, 1991), and
mental imagery (Pressley & Brewster, 1990).
However, it has also been argued that high prior knowledge in
a domain may sometimes reduce dependencies on strategies
(Pressley & McCormick, 1995). Specifically, in Alexanders
(1997; Alexander & Jetton, 2000; Alexander et al., 1997) multidimensional perspective on domain learning, it is assumed that
students low in prior knowledge must rely heavily on cognitive
and metacognitive strategies in learning from text, whereas this
dependency is reduced when students become more knowledgeable. In addition, students with limited prior knowledge may apply
strategies in less efficient and effective ways than more knowledgeable students, who can put less effort into building a foundation of knowledge and more into processing the text deeply (Alexander & Jetton, 2000). In Alexander and Murphys (1998)
cluster-analytic study, some low-knowledge students were indeed
putting much strategic effort into their studies, whereas some
students high in prior knowledge were showing minimum strategic
effort. However, neither strategic processing nor knowledge alone
predicted optimal performance in that study.
Alexander, Schallert, and Hare (1991) distinguished between
domain knowledge and topic knowledge as subcategories of formally acquired or schooled prior knowledge. Whereas domain
knowledge refers to the breadth of ones knowledge about a field
of study (e.g., sociology or law), topic knowledge represents the
depth of ones knowledge about the content of a specific passage
or text. Thus, in relation to text-based learning, topic knowledge
may describe students prior knowledge about the content of a
particular reading text and the concepts discussed in that text
(Alexander et al., 1991).

Prior Knowledge and Reading Purpose Effects

Although both reading purpose and prior knowledge have been
found to influence students strategic processing during learning
from text, the question of how the ability to adjust text processing
to fit reading purposes may differ among readers varying in prior
knowledge about the topic of the text has not been addressed in the
literature. Within the theoretical framework of Alexanders (1997;
Alexander & Jetton, 2000; Alexander et al., 1997) model of
domain learning, one possibility is that reading purpose primarily
affects the text-processing strategies of students low in topic
knowledge. In that model, students high in topic knowledge are
said to be generally more independent of strategic text-processing
during reading, and, if this were the case, they could be expected
to show little variation in strategy use across reading purposes.
However, another possibility when drawing on Alexanders theoretical framework is that reading purpose influences different types
of strategies at different levels of topic knowledge. According to
Alexander and Jetton (2000), students low in topic knowledge may
have to put more effort into strategies that help them acquire a
foundation of knowledge (e.g., memorization), whereas students
high in topic knowledge can put more effort into deeper processing
strategies (e.g., elaboration). If this were the case, one could expect

that reading purpose would primarily affect surface-level strategies

at lower levels of topic knowledge and deep-level strategies at
higher levels of topic knowledge.

The Present Research

Given this theoretical orientation, we set out to examine 10thgrade students self-reported strategic processing of expository
text in different study-related purpose conditions. In addition, we
wanted to examine whether influences of reading purpose on the
reported use of text-processing strategies were dependent on students topic knowledge. By also focusing on students prior knowledge about the topic of the reading text, we hoped to provide
preliminary evidence concerning similarities and differences in
reading purpose influences at different levels of topic knowledge.
The prior studies that guided our research had not considered the
possibility that readers adjustment of strategies to fit reading
purposes might vary as a function of individual differences in topic
knowledge and, thus, left this important question unanswered.
Specifically, we addressed the following two questions in our
investigation: First, how does reading for different study purposes
influence the different types of strategies that 10th-grade students
reportedly use for learning from an authentic social science text?
Second, does students prior knowledge about the topic of the text
moderate the influence of reading purpose on reported use of
different types of text-processing strategies?

Method
Participants and Setting
Participants in the study were 269 10th-grade students from 12 different
junior high schools in Norway. Junior high school encompasses the last 3
years of compulsory education (i.e., 8th10th grades), and most students go
on to further education after finishing the 10th grade. The sample consisted
of 132 female and 137 male students ranging in age from 15 years 4
months to 16 years 3 months, with an overall mean age of 15 years 10
months. A majority (over 95%) of the students were White native speakers
of Norwegian. At least in an international perspective, the sample was
homogeneous (i.e., middle class) in regard to socioeconomic status.
The sample was a subsample of the Norwegian sample that was used in
the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development project
Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). In that project,
approximately 4,000 Norwegian 10th-graders were randomly selected from
different classes and schools. Even though the sample that we used in the
present study was not randomly selected, the schools were selected from
different districts in the middle and eastern part of Norway. All but one of
the schools were public, and all of the students attended regular classes.
Because of the emphasis in Norway on inclusive education (Flem & Keller,
2000) and the fact that only 0.7% of children are not educated in regular
schools (Flem, 1998), the variation in achievement level within our sample
was substantial. This was also reflected in the PISA test scores of our
sample, showing the same variation in reading performance as the large
Norwegian PISA sample. However, only students who were able to read
the selected text and the questionnaires were included in the present
research. This was ensured by directing the teachers to exclude all students
showing reading difficulties. Participation in the study was purely voluntary for both schools and students.
In Norway, the national curriculum specifies the content of the subjects
as well as the time devoted to each subject at the different levels of
compulsory education (i.e., 1st10th grades). During the past decade,
interdisciplinary studies and the use of innovative teaching methods such
as project- or problem-based collaborative learning have gained a foothold

READING PURPOSE AND STRATEGIC PROCESSING

in the compulsory school. In accordance with a view of learning that
stresses the importance of students own responsibility for their learning,
teaching is primarily understood as a process of mediating, guiding, and
supervising students work. Specifically, the social science courses in 10th
grade aim at developing students competence in discussing, evaluating,
and forming their own opinions about topical issues such as economics,
political systems, and international organizations. In addition, students are
supposed to formulate, analyze, and explain different social science problems. The study of social science in 10th grade is also influenced by the
course texts that are used, with students typically assigned tasks such as
writing summaries of text, answering questions about text (focusing on
both memory for details and understanding of content), and explaining
concepts introduced in text. Still, most of the tests, examinations, and
homework have to be completed individually.

Materials
Text. Participants read one expository text about socialization in three
different reading purpose conditions (see Procedure below). The text
consisted of 891 words and was assembled from two different texts about
socialization that were used in the second year of junior college (Bentsen,
Bohmer, & Jenssen, 1998; Eriksen, Ryssevik, & Vardal, 1998). Although
the first part of the text defined the socialization process and described
aspects of socialization in different cultures, the second part dealt with
norms and sanctions as well as their influence on socialization. The text
both introduced a number of important concepts within the social science
domain and illustrated those concepts by using examples from daily life. A
translated excerpt illustrates the expository style of the text:
A culture is characterized by a set of norms, and we are influenced by
those norms from our first day of life, perhaps without our knowing
what is going on. When the norms of society become our own norms,
we say that they are internalized. (Bentsen et al., 1998, p. 35)
The participants had not studied the topic of the text as part of their
social science courses. Still, we expected the participants prior knowledge
about the topic of the text to vary considerably because students interested
in social studies might have acquired such knowledge by other means.
As an indication of text difficulty, we also computed the readability
score of the socialization text. To be able to compare the difficulty of that
text with the difficulty of other kinds of Norwegian reading material, we
used the formula for computing readability scores proposed by Bjo rnsson
(1968), which is based on sentence length and word length. When using
this formula, readability scores range from about 20 (very easy text) to
about 60 (very difficult text). Vinje (1982) reported that the textbooks used
in Norwegian high schools had a readability score of approximately 42. In
the present study, the text read had a readability score of 38.8, suggesting
that it represented a sufficient challenge for our participants and was well
suited for eliciting effortful, strategic text processing.
Topic knowledge measure. As a means of assessing students prior
knowledge about the topic of the text, we developed a multiple-choice test
composed of 13 items. The content of the items referred to concepts that
were discussed in the text (e.g., socialization, norms, and conformity).
Sample items from the topic knowledge measure are displayed in Appendix A.
Students topic knowledge score was a composite of the number of
correct responses out of the 13 items. The scores ranged from 0 to 12 (M
5.29, SD 2.26), with the distribution of the scores approximately normal
(coefficient of skewness .23). The KuderRichardson 20 for the measure
was .54. This rather low level of reliability was attributable to the fact that
many items were quite hard for our participants.
Inventory of cognitive and metacognitive strategies. In conjunction
with the reading task, students were directed to monitor the strategies that
they used as they studied. A strategy inventory was developed for this
purpose, and students were told to mark the inventory immediately following their reading.

327

Think-aloud protocols have been regarded as an effective tool for

gaining access to online strategic processing during reading (see, e.g.,
Ericsson & Simon, 1980; Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995), and this method
has been used in several recent studies concerning the effects of readers
goals on strategic text processing (see, e.g., Brten & Strms, 2003;
Linderholm & van den Broek, 2002; Narvaez et al., 1999; van den Broek
et al., 2001). However, protocol analysis is so time and labor intensive that
it could not be used easily or efficiently with the relatively large samples
participating in the present research. Another limitation of this method is
that school children may process expository texts differently when asked to
think aloud and when reading silently without the think-aloud procedure
(Cote , Goldman, & Saul, 1998). In comparison, the ease and efficiency
with which self-report strategy inventories can be administered, completed,
and scored make them more relevant and useful when the purpose is to
collect information about larger numbers of readers. Furthermore, selfreport inventories may represent less intrusion into normal reading than
think-alouds, at least with children. Self-reports of strategy use may also,
despite their limitations, provide reliable and valid information about
students processing (Pintrich et al., 2000).
The 20 items of the inventory that we used were adapted from the
Learning and Study Strategies InventoryHigh School Version (LASSIHS; Weinstein & Palmer, 1990) and the Cross-Curriculum Competence
Scale (CCC; Baumert, Fend, ONeil, & Peschar, 1998). Whereas the
LASSI-HS is one of the most widely used strategy measures, the CCC is
a self-report instrument used to measure components of self-regulated
learning in the PISA project.
The items that we included in our strategy inventory were selected to
reflect Weinsteins (Weinstein, Husman, & Dierking, 2000; Weinstein &
Mayer, 1986) taxonomy of general learning strategies, including the categories of memorization, organization, elaboration, and monitoring. In this
categorization, memorization is used to select and rehearse information,
without transforming or moving beyond what is given in the text (e.g.,
underlining or repeating sentences to remember them). Organization is
used to relate, group, or order information and ideas given in the text (e.g.,
summarizing, outlining, or diagramming text information). Elaboration is
used to make the text more meaningful by building connections between
information given in the reading text and information located in other
sources (e.g., associating to relevant prior knowledge or linking text
content to other available written material). Finally, monitoring involves
the readers assessing or regulating their learning (e.g., comprehension
confirmation, problem detection, and problem solving).
Both the LASSI-HS and the CCC were originally developed from a
domain-general perspective, asking students to report what they generally
do in terms of their learning and studying. However, items of such general
inventories based on typical behaviors have been successfully adapted to
assess strategy use within specific subject areas (see, e.g., Wolters &
Pintrich, 2001), and they can also be adapted so that students are referring
to a recently completed task when they respond (Pintrich et al., 2000). In
the present research, we asked the students to keep the specific reading
episode in mind as they responded to the items, and the items were
modified so that they referred to the recently completed reading task as a
frame of reference. For example, the LASSI-HS item I test myself to be
sure I know the material I have been studying was slightly modified into
I tested myself to be sure that I knew the material. For similar use of a
strategy inventory tailored to a specific, recently completed reading task,
see Alexander and Murphy (1998) and Alexander et al. (1997).
Each item was accompanied by a 10-point Likert-type scale, on which
the students rated to what extent the statement described what they had
been doing while studying the text. This self-reporting scale ranged from
1 (not at all) to 10 (very much). No intervening anchor points were
provided in the inventory. However, the students were instructed in writing
that the more they had been using the described activities, the higher values
they should choose, and vice versa. In addition, the students were orally
told to choose among the low values if the statement did not describe or to
a small extent described what they had been doing, to choose among the

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BRTEN AND SAMUELSTUEN

middle values if the statement described what they had been doing about
half of the time, and to choose among the high values if the statement
described what they had been doing most of the time or very often. In this
way, low scores on the strategy measures are supposed to reflect that
students perceived themselves to have used the described activities infrequently while reading, with increasing scores representing their perception
of more frequent use of the described activities. It should be noted that the
students were already familiar with responding to similar Likert-type scales
through their participation in the PISA project.
We submitted the strategy data to various explanatory factor and reliability analyses to examine the psychometric properties of the 20 strategyitem scores. On the basis of these analyses, 5 items were eliminated. An
item was eliminated if the proportion of variance explained in the item by
the other items falling on the same factor was extremely low or if the item
loaded equally on more than one factor. We also eliminated items with
severely skewed score distributions and items that substantially lowered
the reliability of the scores on a scale. The scores on the 15 items that we
retained loaded on four separate factors corresponding to Weinstein and
Mayers (1986) categorization of general learning strategies. Finally, we
performed a confirmatory factor analysis to test the latent factor structure
of our inventory. This analysis confirmed our predicted model with four
strategy factors as conceptualized by Weinstein and Mayer, with the fit
indices showing a reasonably good fit between the model and the data,
2(84, N 269) 184.83, p .00, goodness of fit index .91, adjusted
goodness of fit index .88, comparative fit index .97, root-mean-square
error of approximation (RMSEA) .068. The confidence limits for
RMSEA were 0.05 to 0.08.
The internal consistency coefficient (GuttmanCronbach alpha) for the
scores on the three-item scale of memorization that we used in subsequent
analyses was .75. For the scores on the five-item scale of elaboration that
we used, the reliability estimate was .87, whereas the reliability estimates
for the scores on the two-item scale of organization and the scores on the
five-item scale of monitoring, respectively, were .77 and .80. All four
scale-score distributions were approximately normal and thus considered
appropriate for use in further parametric statistical analyses. The coefficients of skewness ranged from .05 to .41.
Admittedly, there is disagreement over statistical procedures that can be
used legitimately with the kind of ordinal information generated by our
strategy measures. Some quantitative researchers (e.g., Cliff, 1996; Harwell & Gatti, 2001) feel that ordinal-scale data without equal units of
measurement should be subjected only to ordinal methods of data analysis
(e.g., nonparametric procedures). Still, most educational research seems to
use ordinal-scaled dependent variables in analyses described as requiring
these variables to be interval scaled (Harwell & Gatti, 2001). In the
methodological literature (e.g., Comrey, 1976; Kerlinger & Lee, 2000;
Prokasy, 1962), it has also been argued that the possible distortions and
errors introduced by treating ordinal measurements as though they were
interval measurements are not necessarily serious because the more powerful statistical methods are less dependent on the underlying scale of
measurement than on the distributional properties of the data. In this view,
with data that are approximately normal in shape . . . , the more powerful
parametric methods of statistical analysis can be used (Kerlinger & Lee,
2000, p. 638). In addition, there is a pragmatic argument related to the fact
that the results researchers get from treating ordinal data as interval data are
quite satisfactory and have led to important scientific advances in both
education and psychology (Comrey & Lee, 1995; Kerlinger & Lee, 2000).
For example, much valuable information regarding strategic processing in
learning and studying has been obtained by researchers who have used
parametric statistics such as multiple regression analysis and analysis of
variance with ordinal information about strategies as dependent variables
(see, e.g., Ames & Archer, 1988; Pintrich, 2000; Wolters, Yu, & Pintrich,
1996).
When we calculated descriptive statistics after dividing the scores of
each composite scale by the number of items, the scores ranged from 1 to
10 on all scales. The scores on the memorization scale had a sample mean

of 4.74 (SD 2.29). For the scores on the elaboration scale, the organization scale, and the monitoring scale, respectively, the sample means were
4.25 (SD 2.23), 4.58 (SD 3.30), and 5.02 (SD 2.06).
In an attempt to validate our strategy measures, we computed the
correlations between the scores on these measures and the students sum
scores on the PISA reading literacy tests. This yielded a coefficient of .06
( p .10) for the memorization scale, .13 ( p .05) for the elaboration
scale, .23 ( p .001) for the organization scale, and .20 ( p .001) for the
monitoring scale. See Appendix B for the items that were included in the
four strategy scales.

Procedure
Schools were randomly assigned to three reading purpose conditions,
with four schools in each condition. The three reading purposes represented
reading tasks that Norwegian 10th-grade students typically encounter in
their social science courses: (a) to read in preparation for a test, (b) to read
so as to write a summary of the main ideas, and (c) to read so as to discuss
text content with peers.
To ensure that the students in the three reading purpose conditions did
not differ in regard to reading level, we performed an analysis of variance
with the students sum scores on the PISA reading literacy tests as dependent variable. No differences between the three subsamples were found,
F(2, 266) .47, p .10. Neither did the variances differ statistically
significantly when testing the homogeneity of variance with the Levene
statistic, F(2, 266) 1.40, p .10.
All the instruments were administered as group measures to the participants at one school at a time, with participants tested in groups of 20 28
students. During one class period, participants in all conditions were first
administered the topic knowledge measure. After the text had been handed
out, the participants in the test condition (n 80) were given the following
instruction: You are going to study this text so that you afterwards can
take a test about the text content. Those in the summary condition (n
91) were told, You are going to study this text so that you afterwards can
write a coherent summary of the main ideas in your own words. The
orientation for the participants in the discussion condition (n 98) was
You are going to study this text so that you understand the topic well and
afterwards can discuss it in a small group of students. In addition, students
in all conditions were told, When you study the text, I want you to notice
how you proceed. Afterwards, you will receive some questions about what
you did while you studied the text. All the participants finished the topic
knowledge test within 7 min and the studying of the text within 14 min.
Immediately after the participants had finished studying the text, they were
asked to complete the strategy inventory to indicate to what extent they had
used the procedures mentioned there as they had studied the text. All the
participants completed the strategy inventory within 8 min.
We used data collected with the original (i.e., domain-general) versions
of the LASSI-HS and the CCC during the preceding class period for
another research purpose to examine possible differences between participants in the three conditions regarding their self-reports of general use of
cognitive and metacognitive strategies. No such differences were found to
be statistically significant. Also, there were no statistically significant
differences between the 12 participating schools in self-reports of general
use of strategies.

Results
Descriptive statistics for the strategy scale scores in each reading purpose condition are presented in Table 1. We computed four
regression equations with students reported use of memorization,
elaboration, organization, and monitoring strategies, respectively,
as outcome measures. Predictors for each of these equations were
topic knowledge and reading purpose. The regression analyses
were performed after centering the continuous topic knowledge
measure while the dependent measures were left in their original

READING PURPOSE AND STRATEGIC PROCESSING

329

Table 1
Means, Standard Deviations, and Skewness Coefficients for the Strategy Scale Scores in Each
Reading Purpose Condition
Reading purpose condition
Test

Summary

Discussion

Strategy

SD

Skew

SD

Skew

SD

Skew

Memorization
Elaboration
Organization
Monitoring

5.61
4.49
4.66
5.52

2.24
2.21
3.34
2.18

.22
.32
.30
.02

4.14
4.29
5.48
4.80

2.11
2.31
3.03
1.83

.42
.42
.17
.06

4.58
4.02
3.68
4.80

2.29
2.17
3.28
2.10

.25
.48
.74
.06

Note. Cell means indicate the average rating of reported strategy use for each strategy category, divided by the
number of statements. The rating scale ranged from 1 to 10.

metric (Aiken & West, 1991). The reading purpose variable was
dummy coded. Therefore, one of the reading purpose conditions
had to be assigned a value of zero in all dummy variables. By
chance, this was the discussion condition. In this way, the discussion condition served as the comparison condition, and the betas 2
and 3 in Tables 25 reflect the differences between this condition
and the other two purpose conditions evaluated at the mean of the
topic knowledge measure (for further details, see notes in Tables
25). In addition, we included a variable representing the crossproduct multiplicative term between topic knowledge and reading
purpose to examine the potential interaction between these two
variables. Two interaction terms had to be created, one between
topic knowledge and the test purpose condition and one between
topic knowledge and the summary purpose condition, again assigning a value of zero to the discussion purpose condition.
To detect possible deviations from linearity with respect to the
relationships between the topic knowledge measure and the outcome measures, we examined scatter plots for each purpose condition. No curvilinear relationships were revealed. We also investigated the possibility of curvilinear relations in the data by
including quadratic first-order and interaction terms (created by

squaring the first-order topic knowledge measure) in a series of

separate regression analyses. For all outcome measures, the beta
coefficients for the quadratic terms were close to zero, indicating
that no curvilinear relations were present.
For all subsequent regression analyses, we performed one joint
test for the two first-order terms of reading purpose and one joint
test for the two second-order terms representing the interaction.
For these tests, we set the alpha level to .05 to distinguish statistically significant from nonsignificant first- and second-order predictors. Moreover, when a statistically significant interaction was
found, we tested whether the predicted values of the three reading
purpose conditions differed significantly at different levels of topic
knowledge. Following Aiken and West (1991, pp. 132133), we
reran the regression analyses with transformed values of topic
knowledge at the levels of interest. The values that we report for
the topic knowledge measure in connection with these analyses are
observed scores. The tests of the betas for the first-order dummy
variables indicated whether the differences were statistically significant. To reduce the probability of Type I error when testing the
differences between regression lines, we considered only t tests
beyond the .025 alpha level to be statistically significant.

Table 2
Results of Multiple Regression Analysis for Memorization

Table 3
Results of Multiple Regression Analysis for Elaboration

Predictor

Unstandardized
beta

Standardized
beta

Predictor

Unstandardized
beta

Standardized
beta

Constant
Topic knowledge (TK)
Test purpose (TP) condition
Summary purpose (SP) condition
TK TP condition
TK SP condition

B0
B1
B2
B3
B4
B5

4.60
.27**
.99***
.47
.10
.40***

.26**
.20***
.10
.06
.21***

Constant
Topic knowledge (TK)
Test purpose (TP) condition
Summary purpose (SP) condition
TK TP condition
TK SP condition

B0
B1
B2
B3
B4
B5

4.05
.32***
.45
.24
.39***
.26

.32***
.09
.05
.24***
.14

2
Note. Joint test of B2, B3: Rchange
.07, F(2, 265) 9.64, p .001; joint
2
test of B4, B5: Rchange
.03, F(2, 263) 3.74, p .025. B0 is the intercept
of the regression line for the students in the discussion purpose (DP)
condition; B0 B2 and B0 B3 are the intercepts of the lines for the
students in the TP and the SP conditions, respectively, all evaluated at the
mean of TK for the entire sample of 269; B1 represents the slope of the
regression line for the students in the DP condition; B1 B4 and B1 B5
represent the slopes of the lines for the students in the TP and the SP
conditions, respectively; B2 and B3 represent the differences in strategy use
between the students in the DP and (a) the TP conditions and (b) the SP
conditions, respectively, evaluated at the mean of TK.
** p .025. *** p .01.

2
Note. Joint test of B2, B3: Rchange
.01, F(2, 265) .90, p .10; joint
2
test of B4, B5: Rchange
.03, F(2, 263) 3.84, p .02. B0 is the intercept
of the regression line for the students in the discussion purpose (DP)
condition; B0 B2 and B0 B3 are the intercepts of the lines for the
students in the TP and the SP conditions, respectively, all evaluated at the
mean of TK for the entire sample of 269; B1 represents the slope of the
regression line for the students in the DP condition; B1 B4 and B1 B5
represent the slopes of the lines for the students in the TP and the SP
conditions, respectively; B2 and B3 represent the differences in strategy use
between the students in the DP and (a) the TP conditions and (b) the SP
conditions, respectively, evaluated at the mean of TK.
*** p .01.

BRTEN AND SAMUELSTUEN

330

Table 4
Results of Multiple Regression Analysis for Organization
Predictor

Unstandardized
beta

Standardized
beta

Constant
Topic knowledge (TK)
Test purpose (TP) condition
Summary purpose (SP) condition
TK TP condition
TK SP condition

B0
B1
B2
B3
B4
B5

3.71
.36**
.89
1.78****
.001
.14

.25**
.12
.26****
.001
.05

2
Note. Joint test of B2, B3: Rchange
.05, F(2, 265) 7.63, p .001; joint
2
test of B4, B5: Rchange
.002, F(2, 263) .28, p .10. B0 is the intercept
of the regression line for the students in the discussion purpose (DP)
condition; B0 B2 and B0 B3 are the intercepts of the lines for the
students in the TP and the SP conditions, respectively, all evaluated at the
mean of TK for the entire sample of 269; B1 represents the slope of the
regression line for the students in the DP condition; B1 B4 and B1 B5
represent the slopes of the lines for the students in the TP and the SP
conditions, respectively; B2 and B3 represent the differences in strategy use
between the students in the DP and (a) the TP conditions and (b) the SP
conditions, respectively, evaluated at the mean of TK.
** p .025. **** p .001.

In Figures 1 and 2, the points and labels on the x-axis represent

standard deviations below and above mean. Very low topic knowledge represents 2 SDs below mean, low topic knowledge represents 1 SD below mean, high topic knowledge represents 1 SD
above mean, and very high topic knowledge represents 2 SDs
above mean. The participants were actually classified according to
their topic knowledge standard scores (z scores). The numbers of
participants classified as very low in topic knowledge (with z
scores at or below 1.5) were 8, 10, and 12 in the test, summary,
and discussion purpose conditions, respectively. The numbers of
students classified as low in topic knowledge (with z scores between 1.5 and 0.5) were 22, 24, and 24 in the test, summary,
and discussion purpose conditions, respectively. The numbers of
participants classified as average in topic knowledge (with z scores
from 0.5 through 0.5) were 27, 31, and 37 in the test, summary,
and discussion purpose conditions, respectively. The numbers of
students classified as high in topic knowledge (with z scores
between 0.5 and 1.5) were 14, 22, and 15 in the test, summary, and
discussion purpose conditions, respectively, and the numbers of
students classified as very high in topic knowledge (with z scores
at or above 1.5) were 9 (test purpose), 4 (summary purpose), and
10 (discussion purpose).
It is important to note that the topic knowledge measure was
used as a continuous measure in all analyses. That is, participants
were not divided into groups a priori with respect to this variable
but rather classified post hoc to assist in the interpretation of the
data. We report on the equations predicting students reported use
of text-processing strategies in the following order: memorization,
elaboration, organization, and monitoring.

Memorization
Table 2 shows both standardized and unstandardized coefficients for the regression equation predicting the reported use of
memorization strategies with topic knowledge, reading purpose,
and the interaction between topic knowledge and reading purpose.

All the predictors together explained a significant amount of

variance in students report of memorization strategies, F(5,
263) 6.28, p .001 (R2 .11). In regard to reading purpose, the
joint F test of the betas of the two first-order terms showed that this
predictor of reported memorization strategies was statistically significant, F(2, 265) 9.64, p .001. At the mean level of topic
knowledge, students who were instructed to read in preparation for
a test reportedly used memorization strategies more than students
instructed to read so as to write a summary or discuss text content
with classmates. However, the joint test of the interaction terms
showed that this effect was moderated by the students topic
knowledge, F(2, 263) 3.74, p .025.
In accordance with Aiken and West (1991, pp. 123124), we
plotted the interaction terms based on the betas in Table 2. This
means that we drew three regression lines after substituting the
dummy codes for each of the reading purpose conditions into the
overall equation for memorization. This substitution produced
three equations, one for each purpose condition, resulting in three
regression lines (see Figure 1).
From the interaction plot in Figure 1, it can be seen that the
relation between reading purpose and the reported use of memorization strategies was different at different levels of topic knowledge. In particular, with higher levels of topic knowledge, students
who read so as to take a test or to discuss text content with others
reportedly used memorization strategies more than students who
read so as to write a summary of the text. In fact, a statistically
significant difference between the predicted values of the test and
the summary purpose condition had emerged already at the low
level of topic knowledge. At the original topic knowledge value of
4 (corresponding to 0.57 SD below mean), the unstandardized beta,
indicating the difference in reported strategy use on the scale from
1 to 10, was 1.09 ( .22), t(263) 2.80, p .005. For topic
knowledge values at or greater than 4, students in the test purpose
condition were predicted to report more use of memorization
strategies than students in the summary purpose condition. A
statistically significant difference between the discussion and the
summary purpose regression lines emerged at the high level of

Table 5
Results of Multiple Regression Analysis for Monitoring
Predictor

Unstandardized
beta

Standardized
beta

Constant
Topic knowledge (TK)
Test purpose (TP) condition
Summary purpose (SP) condition
TK TP condition
TK SP condition

B0
B1
B2
B3
B4
B5

4.83
.30***
.66*
.02
.10
.25

.33***
.15*
.004
.07
.15

2
Note. Joint test of B2, B3: Rchange
.02, F(2, 265) 3.21, p .04; joint
2
test of B4, B5: Rchange
.01, F(2, 263) 1.67, p .10. B0 is the intercept
of the regression line for the students in the discussion purpose (DP)
condition; B0 B2 and B0 B3 are the intercepts of the lines for the
students in the TP and the SP conditions, respectively, all evaluated at the
mean of TK for the entire sample of 269; B1 represents the slope of the
regression line for the students in the DP condition; B1 B4 and B1 B5
represent the slopes of the lines for the students in the TP and the SP
conditions, respectively; B2 and B3 represent the differences in strategy use
between the students in the DP and (a) the TP conditions and (b) the SP
conditions, respectively, evaluated at the mean of TK.
* p .05. *** p .01.

READING PURPOSE AND STRATEGIC PROCESSING

331

Figure 1. Regression lines from the regression of report of memorization on topic knowledge for the three
reading purpose conditions. Report of memorization strategies on the scale of 1 to 10. The value of average
reported use of memorization for the total sample was 4.74. One SD below mean corresponds to the value of
2.45, and 1 SD above mean corresponds to the value of 7.03. Low topic knowledge (TK) 1 SD below mean;
very low TK 2 SDs below mean; high TK 1 SD above mean; very high TK 2 SDs above mean.

topic knowledge. When the topic knowledge value was 7 (0.76 SD

above mean), B 1.15 ( .24), t(263) 2.78, p .01. Thus,
students in the discussion purpose condition were predicted to
report more use of memorization than students in the summary
purpose condition at and above the topic knowledge value of 7.
At lower levels of topic knowledge, students reading for the
purpose of test preparation and students reading for the purpose of
writing a summary reportedly used memorization strategies most.
The difference between the predicted values of the test and of the
discussion purpose condition was found to be statistically significant at the mean and lower levels of topic knowledge. When the
topic knowledge value was 6 (0.31 SD above mean), B .91 (
.18), t(263) 2.66, p .01. Thus, for topic knowledge values at
or below 6, students in the test purpose condition were predicted to
report more use of memorization than students in the discussion
purpose condition. Statistical significance was also obtained between the summary and the discussion purpose regression lines at
the very low level of topic knowledge. At this level, students in the
summary purpose condition were predicted to report more use of
memorization than students in the discussion purpose condition. At
the topic knowledge value of 2 (1.50 SD below mean), B 1.33
( .27), t(263) 2.32, p .025.
Significance tests for the slopes of the regression lines showed
that the only significant slope was the one for students scores in
the discussion condition. For students in this condition, reported
use of memorization was positively related to topic knowledge,
B .27, t(263) 2.61, p .01.

Elaboration
All the predictors together explained a significant portion of the
variance in students reported use of elaboration strategies, F(5,
263) 2.52, p .05 (R2 .05). As can be seen in Table 3, the
conditional effect of reading purpose at the mean level of topic
knowledge was not statistically significant, F(2, 265) .90, p
.10. Nevertheless, the joint test for the second-order terms, F(2,
263) 3.84, p .02, indicated that reading purpose did have an
effect on self-reports of strategy use depending on the level of
topic knowledge.
When we graphed this interaction to interpret its nature (see
regression lines in Figure 2), we found that the effect of reading
purpose on reported use of elaboration strategies was most noticeable at the lower levels of topic knowledge. In particular, the
students in the test purpose condition reported relying more on
elaboration than the students in the discussion condition at lower
levels of topic knowledge. A statistically significant difference
between the regression lines of the test and the discussion purpose
conditions emerged at the low and the very low levels of topic
knowledge. At the original topic knowledge value of 4 (corresponding to 0.57 SD below mean), B .95 ( .20), t(263)
2.50, p .025. That is, for topic knowledge values at or below 4,
students in the test purpose condition were predicted to report
more use of elaboration strategies than students in the discussion
purpose condition. No other differences between pairs of lines at
the original values for the different levels of topic knowledge
reached statistical significance.

332

BRTEN AND SAMUELSTUEN

Figure 2. Regression lines from the regression of report of elaboration on topic knowledge for the three reading
purpose conditions. Report of elaboration strategies on the scale of 1 to 10. The value of average reported use
of elaboration for the total sample was 4.25. One SD below mean corresponds to the value of 2.02, and 1 SD
above mean corresponds to the value of 6.48. Low topic knowledge (TK) 1 SD below mean; very low TK
2 SDs below mean; high TK 1 SD above mean; very high TK 2 SDs above mean.

Significance tests for the slopes of the regression lines revealed

that for the students in the discussion condition, reported use of
elaboration was positively related to topic knowledge, B .32,
t(96) 3.14, p .01. No other slopes reached statistical
significance.

instructed to read so as to summarize the main ideas reportedly

used organization strategies more than students in the other reading purpose conditions. However, the only statistically significant
difference was found between students in the summary and the
discussion conditions.

Organization

Monitoring

The predictors together also explained a significant amount of

the variance in students reported use of organization strategies,
F(5, 263) 6.05, p .001 (R2 .10). The joint test of the two
first-order reading purpose terms, F(2, 265) 7.63, p .001,
indicated that students reported use of organization strategies was
influenced by their purpose for studying the text. However, the
joint test for the two interaction terms, F(2, 263) .28, p .10,
showed no statistically significant interaction between topic
knowledge and reading purpose. Apparently, the effect of reading
purpose on students reported use of organization strategies was
not moderated by their prior knowledge about the topic of the text.
The beta for topic knowledge, B .36, t(263) 2.48, p .025,
which is equivalent to the slope for all three conditions when there
is no statistically significant interaction, and the two betas for
reading purpose, B .89, t(263) 1.87, p .05, for test purpose;
B 1.78, t(263) 3.88, p .001, for summary purpose, which
are equivalent to the differences in self-reports of strategy use
between the students in the test and summary conditions and those
in the discussion condition evaluated at the mean level of topic
knowledge, indicated that students possessing more topic knowledge reportedly used organization strategies more and that students

All the predictors together explained a significant portion of the

variance in students reported use of monitoring strategies, F(5,
263) 4.50, p .001 (R2 .08). Table 5 shows that topic
knowledge was a significant predictor for reported use of monitoring strategies, B .30, t(263) 3.20, p .01, indicating that
students with more topic knowledge reportedly used monitoring
more frequently as they studied the text. In addition, reading
purpose, F(2, 265) 3.21, p .04, but not the interaction between
topic knowledge and reading purpose, F(2, 263) 1.67, p .10,
reached statistical significance in this equation.
Significance tests of the contrasts between students reported
use of monitoring in the three purpose conditions showed that
students reading for the purpose of test taking reportedly used
monitoring strategies more than students reading for the purpose of
summary writing, B .68, t(263) 2.23, p .05, and students
reading for the purpose of group discussion, B .66, t(263)
2.20, p .05.

Discussion
The results of the present study contribute to the scientific
literature on reading by indicating that 10th-grade students report-

READING PURPOSE AND STRATEGIC PROCESSING

edly adjust their strategic processing according to the study-related

purposes for which they read expository school text. Apparently,
students can modify their strategic processing not only to fit the
maximally distinctive (van den Broek et al., 2001, p. 1086)
purposes of exam preparation and entertainment but also in accordance with study-related purposes that they typically encounter in
school. In addition, students are able to do so well before they
enter postsecondary education and while reading authentic school
texts.
Moreover, our findings contribute to research in this area by
showing that the effect of reading purpose may depend on students prior knowledge about the topic of the text. Although other
research has indicated that individual differences in working memory capacity may influence the extent to which students adjust
processing to fit reading purposes (Linderholm & van den Broek,
2002), our investigation provides new evidence that the important
individual-difference factor of topic knowledge may also moderate
reading purpose effects. According to our findings, this topic
knowledge moderator effect was observed for reported use of
memorization and elaboration strategies only. For participants
reading for the purpose of discussing text content with their
classmates, reported use of both memorization and elaboration
strategies was positively related to topic knowledge, whereas no
relation between reported strategy use and topic knowledge was
found for participants reading for the purposes of test taking and
summary writing.
Possibly, low-knowledge students reading for the purpose of
group discussion did not find this situation so demanding that they
wanted to put much effort into trying to remember or to make the
text content more meaningful. Although taking a test and writing
a summary certainly demand an active contribution from each
participant, performance in the group discussion may have been
seen as allowing for a more passive, freeloader role. In contrast,
participants with higher topic knowledge may have decided to use
memorization and elaboration strategies more frequently to put
themselves in an even better position for demonstrating high
competence and receiving social recognition in the expected group
discussion. In any case, the strategic activity reported by the least
knowledgeable participants reading with a discussion purpose did
not seem to be task appropriate in the present study.
It should be noted that the findings are not consistent with any
of the possible patterns of interaction that were suggested on the
basis of Alexanders (1997; Alexander & Jetton, 2000; Alexander
et al., 1997) model of domain learning. Effects of reading purpose
on reports of strategic processing were observed at both lower and
higher levels of topic knowledge, and effects of reading purpose
were not limited to surface-level strategies (i.e., memorization) at
lower levels of topic knowledge and deep-level strategies (i.e.,
elaboration) at higher levels of topic knowledge. Although Alexanders model may well capture the text processing of adult
college readers, the younger readers who participated in our study
may have been dependent on strategic processing even at higher
levels of topic knowledge and, moreover, likely to use both
surface- and deep-level strategies at lower as well as higher levels
of topic knowledge. Thus, it seems important to test further with
readers at different educational levels the predictions about how
topic knowledge may moderate the effects of reading purpose on
strategic text processing that can be derived from Alexanders
framework.

333

No interaction of topic knowledge with reading purpose was

found in students reported use of organization strategies, indicating that the significant conditional effect of reading purpose on
that type of strategies did not depend on students topic knowledge. Not surprisingly, the reported use of organization strategies
was higher for participants who read for the purpose of writing a
summary containing the main ideas of the text. Moreover, reported
use of organization was positively related to topic knowledge. The
fact that the effect of reading purpose on reported use of organization strategies was not dependent on students topic knowledge
indicates that students in the summary condition reported more use
of organization than students in the two other purpose conditions
regardless of level of topic knowledge. Possibly, the students in the
summary condition perceived that the instruction to study the text
so that they could write a summary of the main ideas corresponded
so closely to the content of the organization items (I wrote down
keywords and main ideas, I wrote a short summary of the main
ideas) that they were more likely to respond positively to those
items at all levels of topic knowledge.
Finally, no interaction of topic knowledge with reading purpose
was found in students reported use of monitoring strategies.
However, students reading for the purpose of taking a test reportedly used monitoring strategies more than students reading for the
purposes of writing a summary or discussing with peers. In addition, reported use of monitoring was positively related to topic
knowledge. Reading in preparation for a test, writing a summary,
and discussing with peers may seem to involve the same fundamental goal of text understanding, and it could therefore be expected that students in the three purpose conditions would have
regarded the process of monitoring their understanding as equally
appropriate. In accordance with Lorch et al. (1993), however, we
found that reading for the well-defined purpose of future formal
evaluation was perceived to demand more careful assessment of
understanding than other study-related purposes. As noted before,
it could also be expected that a perception of the fundamental goal
of text understanding would make elaboration equally important
regardless of purpose, and indeed, at the mean of topic knowledge,
no effect of reading purpose on students reported use of elaboration strategies was found in this study. However, this result is
qualified by the finding that purpose did have an effect on reported
use of elaboration at other levels of topic knowledge.
Even though we believe that the present study contributes to the
literature on reading by indicating that the interaction effect of
topic knowledge with reading purpose may differ with type of
strategic processing, it should be acknowledged that our investigation comes with certain limitations. First, the participants strategic text processing was not examined online, for example,
through the use of concurrent verbal protocols (Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995). Therefore, our findings are limited to reading purpose
and interaction effects on students perceptions of their own strategic activity. It should be noted, however, that the students were
asked to report on their strategy use in the context of a specific
reading task and immediately after finishing their reading.
Second, because students comprehension performance was not
the focus of our study, we did not test readers representation of the
text once reading was completed. This means that we cannot really
answer the question whether students reportedly used strategies
that helped their reading purpose. Still, there are some indications
in our data that the students reported use of effective strategies.
Thus, readers with a summary purpose reportedly used organiza-

BRTEN AND SAMUELSTUEN

334

tion strategies more than those with other purposes, with that
strategy choice suggesting a good fit between reading purpose and
strategic activity. Additionally, readers with a test purpose reported using monitoring more than did those with a summary or
discussion purpose, and increased use of monitoring has indeed
been related to increased performance on both memory and comprehension tests (for a review, see Trabasso & Bouchard, 2002).
However, our results do not confirm the assumption that exam
preparation reading generally elicits more strategic text processing
than other reading types (Lorch et al., 1993). Memorization was
reportedly used more in the test purpose condition than in the
summary condition at all levels of topic knowledge except for the
very low one and more in the test purpose condition than in the
discussion condition at average and low levels of topic knowledge.
Elaboration was reportedly used more in the test purpose condition
than in the discussion condition only when students had little or
very little topic knowledge. Our findings thus impart several
nuances to Lorch et al.s (1993) much cited study, which indicated
that students reading in preparation for tests might use strategies
more than students reading for other study-related purposes. In
particular, it may seem premature to conclude that reading in
preparation for tests and examinations generally elicits more use of
strategies such as memorization and elaboration because more use
of memorization and elaboration in that situation may depend on
students prior knowledge about the topic of their study texts.
Flexibility may be seen as a hallmark of strategic reading. Thus,
being a strategic reader involves using different strategies as is
fitting until the purpose for reading is met. In school, salient
purposes include reading to prepare for tests and examinations,
reading to write summaries of viewpoints, and reading to prepare
for class discussions. It seems important that all students are made
explicitly aware of such purposes and of the need for flexible
strategy use under appropriate circumstances. Because students do
not automatically use the best strategies when reading for different
purposes (Narvaez et al., 1999), they may also need assistance in
selecting and using effective strategies. During such instruction,
teachers should be aware that students at different levels of background knowledge might need effective scaffolding in different
types of reading situations. For example, reading instruction may
be designed to help less knowledgeable students select and use
effective strategies when reading in preparation for class discussions. Over time, students should learn how to self-regulate their
purposeful, strategic reading comprehension by assessing their
strategies in relation to the purposes they are pursuing and by
adapting and regulating those strategies in the service of reaching
their goals.

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(Appendixes follow)

BRTEN AND SAMUELSTUEN

336

Appendix A
Sample Items for the Topic Knowledge Test
1. Norms can be explained as concrete expressions of . . .
*a. the values in a society.
b. penalty in a society.
c. law-abidingness in a society.
d. rules that we should not follow in a society.
e. class distinctions in a society.
5. Socialization is a process . . .
a. where the goal is to become as like each other as possible.
b. where one adapts oneself to a socialist party.

c. where one primarily learns about socialism.

*d. where one learns to adapt oneself to the society.
e. where the goal is to learn about the cultures of different countries.
12. Conformity can mean that . . .
a. you do exactly the opposite of what others expect you to do.
b. you feel well.
c. you ask about something in class that nobody understands.
d. you wear clothes that you think others will find terrible.
*e. you dress in the fashion that is followed by your classmates.

Appendix B
Items Used in Strategy Scales
Memorization
I tried to memorize as much as possible.
I tried to memorize what I thought was important.
I practiced by saying the material to myself over and over.

I tested myself to be sure that I knew the material.

Now and then I stopped reading to think over or review what I had read.
I tried to concentrate on the most important ideas and ignore less
important details.

Elaboration
I tried to figure out how what I read might be useful in the real world.
I tried to imagine situations in which new words or ideas in the text
might fit in.
I tried to figure out how the topic fitted in with what I have already
learned.
I tried to understand the information better by relating it to something I
know.
While I was reading, I thought about situations in or outside school that
were related to the text content.

Organization
I wrote down keywords and main ideas.
I wrote a short summary of the most important ideas.

Monitoring
I tried to think through the content and assess the meaning of it.
I asked myself questions about the text content.

Note. Items in this appendix are adapted from the Cross-Curriculum

Competence Scale (CCC) and from the Learning and Study Strategies
InventoryHigh School (LASSI-HS). The CCC items are from Prepared
for Life-Long Learning: Frame of Reference for the Measurement of
Self-Regulated Learning as a Cross-Curricular Competence (CCC) in the
PISA Project, by J. Baumert, H. Fend, H. F. ONeil, and J. L. Peschar,
1998, Paris: Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. In
the public domain. The LASSI-HS items are from LASSI-HS Users
Manual, by C. E. Weinstein and D. R. Palmer, 1990, Clearwater, FL: H &
H Publishing. Copyright 1990 by H & H Publishing. Adapted with
permission.

Received December 16, 2002

Revision received October 16, 2003
Accepted November 25, 2003