Assessing High School Students’ Reading Motivation in a Voluntary Summer Reading Program

High school students talk of summer in terms of vacationing, relaxing, and spending time with friends. Rarely do students say leisure reading will be a part of their summer. This gap in literacy activities often results in a decline in learning, particularly in minority and lower income students. Many schools use summer reading programs with the dual purpose of encouraging reading and to offset summer learning loss. Most existing research on summer reading programs focuses on library programs, young students, or remediation. Little research exists on the nature of school‐wide summer reading programs in high school, yet many high schools use such programs. Further, there is no instrument available to explore student motivation regarding summer reading programs. The purpose of this article is to add to research on reading motivation among secondary students and to create an instrument to measure reading motivation within the context of a summer reading program.