Reading E-Books Takes Longer Than Reading Paper Books

Hugh Pickens writes "PC World reports on a study showing that reading from a printed book — versus an e-book on any of the three tested devices, an iPad, Kindle 2, and PC — was a faster experience to a significant degree. Readers measured on the iPad reported reading speeds, on average, of 6.2 percent slower than their print-reading counterparts, while readers on the Kindle 2 clocked in at 10.7 percent slower. Jacob Nielsen had each participant read a short story by Ernest Hemingway. Each participant was timed, then quizzed to determine their comprehension and understanding of what they just read. Nielsen also surveyed users' satisfaction levels after operating each device (or page). For user satisfaction, the iPad, Kindle, and book all scored relatively equally at 5.8, 5.7, and 5.6 on a one-to-seven ranking scale (seven representing the best experience). The PC, however, did not fare so well, getting a usability score of 3.6."

Comments

Not statistically significant

[EvanED]

Way to mention the results aren't actually statistically significant:

The iPad measured at 6.2% lower reading speed than the printed book, whereas the Kindle measured at 10.7% slower than print. However, the difference between the two devices was not statistically significant because of the data's fairly high variability.

(Emph. mine)

Re:Not statistically significant

[TubeSteak]

Way to mention the results aren't actually statistically significant:

You know why the data was highly variable?
"A 24-user study showed that..."

24 users is less a study, and more a reason to declare "further research needed"

Re:Not statistically significant

[rainmouse]

With a sample size lower than what is even acceptable for a undergraduate students assignment and too many ignored variables such as users already being used to reading paper books and not digital ones, this article really isn't worth the paper its digitally printed upon.

Re:Not statistically significant

[Runaway1956]

Uhhh - age does play a factor. I'm over 50, and there are some things that I don't like messing with, because the buttons are to small, or the interface isn't what I'm used to, or I just don't like the design. I'm aging, and I have my ways. I'm not changing because a bunch of 30 or 40 year old punk kids decide that an iPod should look like this, or an Android should behave like that. Given a choice between a printed realtree book, and electronic versions, I'll take the treebark, thank you. When I can't get the realtree, then I want the electronic version on my PC, with a nice wide screen, and what some people would call "large print". No little bitty 3 inch screens, thank you very much, and certainly no keypad where my index finger covers half a dozen keys.

Re:Not statistically significant

[BForrester]

Accordingly, you could argue that the discrepancy caused by old users might be balanced out by young users who wasted a lot of time saying, "Where's the damn 'on button' on this old-fashioned block of papers?"

Re:you cannot jump 30-pages

[delinear]

Novelty, too I guess. Most people have used paper books their whole lives. I'd be interested to see the tests in 20 years of kids who have grown up with ebooks as their primary source of reading material and how they get on when they're handed a real book.

Flawed Study?

[Kneo24]

Maybe I'm just being obtuse here, but it wasn't clear to me if they read the same story on all of the platforms, or just had each person read the story once and the testers chose the platform for them.

This is pretty significant. If you're going to have me read the same 30 pages over and over again, I may slow down due to boredom, or I may skim the pages and the progression appears to have increased.

Sounds like a good thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Books should be read carefully and slowly. What's the rush?

Newbies

[Tx]

Not being frivolous, but as far as I can tell, the users were new to reading ebooks, but presumably not so with paper books. If you were to turn the study round, and test people who were familiar with ebooks but not with paper, you might get a very different result, especially on the general satisfaction. On the rare occasions when I read a paper book these days, I find it very irritating that I can't flip pages one-handed, larger books are actually hard to hold one-handed, I have to remember to place a bookmark and be careful not to lose it, because the damn thing doesn't automatically open back up to the last page I read, etc etc. Of course paper-book people are so used to these limitations, they don't actually notice them.

Re:Newbies

[ColdWetDog]

Good point - combined with the FP's concern about the low number of people involved in the study (n=24) and the various devices, we basically don't know anything new. If you have a 10% difference in a small, self selected sample then one should be very, very careful not to extrapolate this data much.

My take home message: It's all about the same. Do what you like. Get off my lawn.

Re:Out of 7 ?

[Blink Tag]

You've encountered seven point scales (often called Likert scales: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likert_scale ) in the past. [Please select the best answer]

- Strongly disagree
- Disagree
- Somewhat disagree
- Neither agree nor disagree
- Somewhat agree
- Agree
- Strongly agree