Reading Outcomes Framework Toolkit

What is the Reading Outcomes Framework Toolkit?

This is a practical toolkit to help evaluate activities that encourage reading for pleasure and empowerment. It includes:

• a bank of evidence about how reading relates to these outcomes
• a framework of outcomes of reading for pleasure and empowerment
• questions to evaluate whether a programme impacts on these outcomes

How will it help me?

It will help you understand, demonstrate and improve the impact of your activity to encourage reading. It will support you to make the case for investment and advocate for reading, by outlining existing evidence about the outcomes of reading and providing guidance about gathering evidence for the contribution your work makes to these outcomes. It will strengthen evaluation methods across the reading sector.

How do I use it?

You use the toolkit to plan and carry out evaluations. The diagram to the right takes you through the stages you will need to follow and further guidance is available on the following pages, including a practical example here.

Start with your evaluation questions. What do you want to find out by doing an evaluation?

1. Identify your outcomes
   What are you trying to achieve and for whom? See section: Outcomes
2. Design the methods
   What sort of data will you collect? When will you measure? Who will you include? See section: Methods
3. Choose your measures
   How will you measure your desired outcomes? See section: Questions
4. Design your tools (eg.survey) collect the data
5. Analyse & learn
   Did you achieve the outcomes? How? What could be improved? How does this compare to what others have found? See section: Evidence

How was it developed?

The project is led by a collaborative steering group of organisations in the reading sector, in consultation with wider stakeholders. The process has been supported by research and evaluation experts at OPM and BOP Consulting.

Who is it for?

It can be used by anyone working to encourage reading for pleasure and empowerment, for example in charities, libraries, schools, colleges, early years settings, family learning, prisons and health.

What do the key terms mean?

The toolkit focuses on reading for pleasure and empowerment, which is reading as a way to spend time and for entertainment, or for self-cultivation and self-development. It is reading that takes place voluntarily; the reader chooses what or when to read. It includes reading fiction, non-fiction, digital materials, print materials, picture books, comics, newspapers, magazines, listening to others read or to audio books and shared reading.

The toolkit helps you evaluate activities, which are programmes, initiatives, interventions or pieces of work that you carry out with a target group to encourage reading for pleasure and empowerment. Activities can focus on encouraging individuals to read or on shared reading (for example, parents or carers reading to children). Intermediaries such as practitioners or parents might be involved.

The framework maps outcomes, which are the “changes, benefits, learning or other effects that result from what a project or organisation does … They may include changes in users’ knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviour” (Creating your theory of change: NPC’s practical guide, NPC, 2014).

The outcomes in the framework are expressed in the positive, because there is existing evidence that reading can cause a positive impact in these areas. When evaluating activities you should be aware of negative changes as well. Not every reading activity will lead to every outcome – you need to review your activity against the framework, selecting the relevant outcomes and finding out if a change results from your activity.

Is the toolkit focused on adults or children?

The outcomes framework has been developed from current evidence about the impact of reading for pleasure and empowerment on adults, parents/carers and children and young people, and for both confident and emerging readers. However, there is not enough evidence to be sure if different outcomes result for different groups, or from different types of reading.

The evidence section shows where the existing evidence comes from, and where there are gaps in evidence. Over time, we hope to increase the evidence base as the framework is used across the reading sector.

The toolkit includes questions that can be used with adults, parents & carers and children / young people. You will need to select questions that are appropriate for your target audience and icons have been included to help you do this. You may also want to evaluate the impact of your activity on the practitioners or volunteers that deliver it, but that is beyond the scope of this toolkit.

Who developed the framework?

The framework has been developed as a partnership project led by The Reading Agency. All core partners are listed in the ‘partners’ section. The project is funded by the Peter Sowerby Foundation: we are very grateful for their support, without which this project would not have been possible.

Referencing the toolkit

If you would like to reference the toolkit, please use the following text: The Reading Agency et al (2016) Reading Outcomes Framework Toolkit, London: The Reading Agency.

Reading Outcomes Framework PDF

Evidence by outcome

This section of the Toolkit contains the evidence that supports the inclusion of the outcomes in the Framework. It can also be used to demonstrate the case for reading for pleasure and empowerment programmes. The Toolkit doesn’t include evidence for the reading engagement outcomes. This is because these are the direct outcomes that you will need to measure to know that your activity has impacted on reading engagement (which in turn can contribute to the wider outcomes). These outcomes are specific to the individual activity and so it is not relevant to include general evidence about how other programmes have contributed to them.

The wider outcomes of reading for pleasure and empowerment, health and well-being, intellectual, personal and social are included in the Framework due to specific evidence that highlights how reading contributes to each of these outcomes. The evidence is mostly drawn from a report we commissioned for this project which reviewed the literature about the impact of reading for pleasure and empowerment. The report focused on reading that takes place outside of the formal education environment and on the outcomes of reading for pleasure and empowerment other than improved literacy. The selection criteria are outlined in the report.

The strength of the evidence included varies and the research that is cited uses a variety of methods, with different audiences and focused on different types of reading. The full references are included at the end of the section. To investigate how the outcomes relate directly to your work you will need to carry out your own evaluation, but you may find it useful to use the existing evidence to put your own findings into context.

The Toolkit also doesn’t include direct evidence about how reading for pleasure and empowerment contributes to positive cultural, economic and societal impacts. These impacts can follow on from the health and wellbeing, intellectual, personal and social outcomes, but because they take place at a societal level it is difficult to measure how they directly relate to activity to encourage reading for pleasure and empowerment.

If you are aware of any evidence that we should consider adding to this section please email the details to us.

Here you can download supporting documents including case studies that describe how the Toolkit was used in five real settings.

• Outcome definitions
• 2015 Literature Review: The Impact of Reading for Pleasure and Empowerment
• Toolkit pilot in five live settings
• Pilot case study – Castleton Primary School and Children’s Centre in Leeds
• Pilot case study – Read Regional, an annual campaign in Cumbria from New Writing North
• Pilot case study – King Alfred Academy’s Accelerated Reader programme in Oxfordshire
• Pilot case study – Kirklees Home Library Service
• Pilot case study – Reading Ahead at Newcastle Under Lyme College
• Production Timeline
• PDF version of the Framework Toolkit