Step 1: Jot down your ideas and share with a partner.

Step 2: Read a Times article about a recent study.

Read the New York Times article “Fewer People Are Reading for Fun, Study Finds,” published on Aug. 20, 2025. It begins:

Any reader knows the unique delight of settling down with a good book.

But over the past two decades, there has been a steady decline in Americans who read for fun, according to a study published on Wednesday.

Researchers from University College London and the University of Florida examined national data from 2003 to 2023 and found that the share of people who reported reading for pleasure on a given day fell to 16 percent in 2023 from a peak of 28 percent in 2004 — a drop of about 40 percent. It declined around 3 percent each year over those two decades.

There is evidence that reading for pleasure has been declining since the 1940s, the researchers said, but they called the size of the latest decrease “surprising,” given that the study defined reading broadly, encompassing books, magazines and newspapers in print, electronic or audio form

Step 3: Analyze the study.

1. What was the scientific question that researchers wanted to answer?

2. How did researchers plan and carry out their investigation?

3. What do you notice in the graph above? What does it show?

4. What new data did the investigation yield? (Data is the factual information collected during observations, experiments or studies.)

5. What explanation did researchers construct using the data they collected and interpreted to answer their original question?

6. What significance does this research have for science, the world or our lives?

7. What is one thing you learned about this study or about how scientists approach their work?

8. What further questions do you have about this research and its significance?

Step 4: Work with others to come up with your own scientific investigation.

In this study, researchers tried to better understand reading trends, but the study did not answer the question of why Americans were reading less. Collaborate with others to propose how researchers might design a study to address that question.

More?

• Science Practice, a new resource aligned with the Science and Engineering Practices for the Next Generation Science Standards, aims to help students better understand how scientists actively gather evidence-based knowledge and solve problems. Learn more about this feature in this introductory post.

• See all the lesson plans in this series.