Reading and Related Skills in the Early School Years: Are boys really more likely to struggle?

Abstract

This study examined whether boys and girls in the early school years differed in reading and related skills, and their rates of progress. Gender ratios were calculated to ascertain whether there were more boys than girls who struggle with different facets of reading, and whether the variability of boys' scores resulted in more boys being identified as poor readers, as evidenced by previous studies. A sample of 335 students in Years 1 and 2 were administered six reading and related assessments. Boys and girls did not significantly differ on any of the measures, and differences in gains were negligible. Boys did not consistently demonstrate significantly greater variability in scores (with the exception of single-word reading and spelling in Year 1 only). These differences, however, did not affect gender ratios for poor performance. Gender ratios were relatively low across measures, but increased with years of schooling. Implications of the results are discussed.

Differential identification of females and males with reading difficulties: A meta-analysis

“…In previous studies, researchers investigating gender differences with reading difficulties have discovered a wide range of gender ratios, but the origin of this gender difference in prevalence rates is unknown. Several characteristics of the individual studies may have impacted previous findings, including differences in identification criteria, the types of reading measures used in identification procedures, and differences in sample sizes and year of publication (e.g., Hawke, Wadsworth, Olson, & DeFries, 2007; Liederman, Katrowitz, & Flannery, 2005; Limbrick, Wheldall, & Madelaine, 2012; Siegel & Smythe, 2005).…”

Differentiating between Good Readers and Poor Readers: The Role of Linguistic and Cognitive Factors

“…This in turn leads girls to read more and thus increase the reading achievement gap. On the other hand, it is important to note that there are studies that found no differences in reading skills between boys and girls (Limbrick et al, 2012;White, 2007). In line with her study's results, White noted that the notion of boys' underachievement in reading is grossly overstated.…”

Executive functions in Chinese kindergarten children with early reading problems

“…48 children (25 boys and 23 girls; aged 5.87) whose word reading scores fell into the bottom 25% of all children in our sample were identified as poor readers. The cut‐off value of 25% was chosen because it was commonly used to identify poor readers in previous research (Darney, Reinke, Herman, Stormont, & Ialongo, 2013; Deng, Cai, Zhou, & Leung, 2020; Limbrick, Wheldall, & Madelaine, 2012; Liu et al, 2010; McBride‐Chang et al, 2013). And among the remaining children in the sample ( n = 142), 48 children (25 boys and 23 girls; aged 5.89) were selected as the normal readers by a matching procedure.…”