Effect of value analysis discussions on students’ political attitudes and reading comprehension

This study investigated the effects of value analysis discussion and of reading controversial news articles on students’ political attitudes and reading comprehension. Fifteen intact classes were selected randomly and assigned to one of three treatments; Value analysis of controversial issues, reading without analysis, and control, A cloze test and a political attitudes scale were used in a pretest/posttest design. Analysis of covariance demonstrated slight, but not statistically significant differences between groups on the reading test. Students in the group that regularly discussed controversial issues using a value analysis approach showed gains on the measures of Political Confidence, Political Interest, and Social Integration, but not on Political Trust.