Jennifer Cotennec, Psychology 2011
Lafayette College
Easton PA
January 2010

This study consisted of 37 children ages 4 to 9. There were 19 girls and 18 boys, which were collected through Ms. Scrocca’s class in the Haldane Elementary School, and the Fishkill Kiddie Academy. There were eight interactive links on the website to be studied, however, only 7 of the books were tested with the children. “Who What Where When Why How” was unable to be included in this test, as it is not truly considered a “book.”

Amongst children ages 4 to 9, the two most popular interactive books on the
websitewww.jeanmarzollo.com were “Castle Crash” and “Monsters for Sale”. The next most popular book was the “Rebus Songs & Games” book. The next most popular book was “The Old Sow Song,” and then “Close Your Eyes”. The next most popular book was “Earth Day Rap”, and the least popular book appeared to be “I Love You.”

Popularity amongst children ages 4 to 9:

1. Castle Crash
2. Monsters for Sale
3. The Old Sow Song
4. Close Your Eyes

When only the scores from the girls in this study are taken into consideration, thefavorite bookwas “Monsters for Sale”, and the second was “Rebus Songs & Games”. The third favorite book among girls was “Earth Day Rap”. The next favorite book was “Close Your Eyes,” and the next was “The Old Sow Song”. The two books with the lowest rating were tied, and were “I Love You”, and “Castle Crash.”

Popularity amongst GIRLS ages 4 to 9:

1. Monsters for Sale
2. Rebus Songs
3. Earth Day Rap
4. Close Your Eyes

When only the scores from the boys in this study are taken into consideration, the favorite book was “Castle Crash”, and then “The Old Sow Song”. The third most popular book was book “Monsters For Sale”, and the fourth was “Close Your Eyes”. The next two most popular books were “Rebus Songs & Games” and “I Love You”.
The least popular book for the boys was book “Earth Day Rap.”

Popularity amongst BOYS ages 4 to 9:

1. Castle Crash
2. The Old Sow Song
3. Monsters for Sale
4. Close Your Eyes

When not divided by gender, the top four most popular books in order were “Castle Crash,” “Monsters for Sale,” “Rebus Songs & Games,” and “The Old Sow Song.”

When separated by gender, the girls preferred the four books as follows: “Monster For Sale,” “Rebus Songs & Games,” “Earth Day Rap,” and “Close Your Eyes.” The boys preferred the four books as follows: “Castle Crash,” “The Old Sow Song,” “Monsters for Sale,” and “Close Your Eyes.”

The boys and girls appear to be in agreement about the two highly rated books: “Monster For Sale,” and “Close Your Eyes,” both being rated in the top four books for girls and boys. While the boys preferred “Castle Crash,” which followed the trend of the overall preferences (when not divided by gender) the girls did not put this book on their top four choices. The girls rated “Rebus Songs & Games” as one of their top four books, which was also in agreement with the overall scores when not divided by gender, the boys did not appear to agree when their scores were analyzed separately.
The girls’ scores showed “Earth Day Rap” as one of their top four scores, which is not in agreement with the overall scores when not separated by gender; the overall scores showed that “Earth Day Rap” was the second least favorite.
The boys’ second favorite book was “The Old Sow Song,” which did not appear to be a favorite among the girls, but was the fourth favorite when scores were not divided by gender.

Set up:

Children between the ages of 4 and 9 will be divided into groups of four by similar age. In each small group, children will be asked a question to assess their mood: “Are you feeling happy, sad or neither?” Then the kids will be shown four different interactive online books or games back to back in a random order so as to reduce effects of order and/or fatigue. Certain responses will be noted during activity, such as eye contact, distraction, smiling, or frowning. Following each presentation of a book, each child will be asked to “rate” each one on a quasi-likert scale with three options. The presentation will be “view book” then “rate book” then “view book” then “rate book” and so on. Children will be asked after viewing all 4 books, “If you could choose only one book to watch again right now, which would you choose?” Then, children will be given a sticker to place on their favorite book, and then given a crayon to place an “X” through the book they liked the least.

The first (sad) face corresponds to liking the least, or not liking at all. The second face is neutral, the third face is happy, corresponding with “likes very much.” Children whose actions are recorded as opposing their likert-score rating will not be taken into account.

Presentation:

The presentation of each online book will be presented in a random order for each group viewing. They will be randomized using a Latin Square Design. Group 1 will contain participants 1, 2, 3, 4, group 2 will contain participants 5, 6, 7, 8 and so on. Each of the 8 conditions will be labeled as A, B, C… through H. The first group will view books A, B, H, C. The second group will view books G, D, F, E. The third group will view books B, C, A, D, the fourth group will have H, E, G, F, the fifth group will have C, D, B, E, the sixth group will have A, F, H, G, and the seventh group will have D, E, C, F, and the eighth group will have B, G, A, H. The ninth group will have E, F, D, G, the tenth group will have C, H, B, A, the eleventh group will have F, G, E, H, and the twelfth group will have D, A, C, B. The thirteenth group will have G, H, F, A, and the fourteenth group will have E, B, D, C. the fifteenth group will have H, A, G, B, and the sixteenth group will have F, C, E, D. The following group will start at the beginning.

Rating:

After viewing each the four online books, each child will be asked individually (and not in front of age mates) which face corresponded to each book they just viewed. After all four books are viewed, they will be asked to indicate which book they liked the best (by placing a sticker on it), and the least (by putting an X through with a crayon.)

Raw Data:

See all of the Books Online here!