The effects of study guides on content retention and reading achievement among community-college freshmen

This research study investigated the effects of study guides on community-college freshmen's retention of history content and on their reading achievement. Additionally, this study examined the impact of age, sex, and class time on the strategy used in this study. Two hundred twenty-five community-college students enrolled in a first semester history course were assigned to four experimental and six control groups. Eighty-nine students were assigned to the experimental groups and 136 students were assigned to the control groups. A history pretest and posttest and the inferential subtest of Forms A and B (Blue Level) of the Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test were used as measuring instruments. For one semester, the experimental groups received regular classroom instruction and completed a study guide for each chapter of their text, while the control groups received their regular classroom instruction without study guides. Posttest scores were compared by the t statistic. The criterion for acceptance or rejection of hypotheses was at the .05 level of significance. Both the experimental and control groups made significantly higher scores on the posttest of history content; however, the amount of progress for the experimental groups was significantly greater (p=<.001) than for the control groups in all categories--age, sex, and class time. The experimental groups made significantly higher scores on the posttest of reading also.