The Association between Reading Anxiety and Reading Achievement across World Populations: A Meta-Analysis

Reading is essential for daily life. Therefore, an inability to engage in reading due to either a lack of reading abilities or a fear of reading would be debilitating. Reading anxiety is the fear of reading and is theorized to be negatively associated with reading achievement. Research on reading anxiety has existed since the 1980’s, however, it has been a quickly rising area of investigation in recent years. The goal of the present meta-analysis was to determine the strength of the association between reading anxiety and reading achievement. This preregistered meta-analysis was designed with the intention of being representative of world populations. Through systematic screening of the published and unpublished literature, 44 studies were identified to be included in the meta-analysis (totaling 113 effect sizes). The 9,114 participants from these studies came from a range of backgrounds. The included studies were conducted in 5 continents, 9 countries, and 7 languages. A moderate negative correlation was found between reading anxiety and reading achievement (r = -0.31). Learning disability status, gender, reading domain, and age were not significant moderators and did not significantly account for the heterogeneity in the effect size. The association between reading anxiety and reading achievement may have practical implications for the fields of psychology and education, specifically for efforts to promote people’s reading achievement while maintaining their socioemotional wellbeing. An important direction for future research will be to use longitudinal designs to uncover how reading anxiety and reading achievement may co-develop. This would improve suggestions that can be made on how to support people struggling in their reading anxiety and reading achievement.