Resumen de Screening reading abilities: a comparison between engineering, education, health and psychology in portuguese college students
A. Sucena, F. L. Viana, J. Falcáo Carneiro, F. Gomes de Almeida
A recent study indicated alarmingly low results in reading competencies of Portuguese engineering students. This paperintends to evaluate if this tendency is restricted to engineering studies or if it is also present in other scientific domains. Tothis end, two studies were conducted using a reading screening test. In the first study, 168 students from Engineering,Health, Psychology and Education participated in an unconstrained time administration of the test. In the second study,the same test was administered in a time constrained mode to 153 students from the same scientific areas.It is concluded that the low results obtained for engineering students are also detected in other scientific domains. Acomparison between Engineering and other domains students show slight differences, although not reaching statisticalsignificance. These results emphasize the importance for screening tests able to quickly and economically assess collegestudent’s reading ability. This study proposes a low cost, low time consuming tool for evaluation of reading competences,along with normative results for Portuguese speaking college population.
