Reading Habits among College Students of Kashmir across Genders

Purpose Reading has increasingly been the object of empirical and theoretical investigation since decades being studied from different dimension by subject specialists particularly Psychology, Sociology, Education, Media Studies and Library & Information Science. The present study aims to investigate the reading habits of the college students and their gender variability. Design/Methodology/Approach The survey method is employed with a questionnaire for data collection following stratified random sampling. The data is analysed using different statistical and quantitative techniques. The findings obtained are correlated with earlier studies. Besides Z-statistic test is applied for the testing of hypothesis. Findings The results reveal that the college students have positive attitude towards reading with females being more dominant. The students, irrespective of gender acquire reading habits mostly of their own and prefer to read in morning, at home and in English language. The results discover that male read for information and females for education more. It further reveals that the male students mostly read about Religion, Politics and Literature whereas majority of female prefer Religion, Science & Technology and Literature. Research limitations/implications Despite providing meaningful insights on reading habits across genders, the limitation of the study is its sample size and frame focussing college students. This makes it difficult to generalise the results across different sections of the society. Originality/value The study confirms that gender is the principle factor affecting reading habits of students and females are more pre-dominant than males in reading culture