This page continues explanations of the scores you obtained by taking the LRQ. If you have not taken it, but would like to, click here to do so: Literary Response Questionnaire (LRQ).

Explanations of factors: The factors are represented by your scores. If you have printed and charted your scores you can refer to the chart as you read these explanations. They are paraphrased from an article by David S. Miall and Don Kuiken, the authors of the LRQ. (See below for a citation to the source article.)

• Insight: Some items on the survey reflect the way your reading can guide your "recognition of previously unrecognized qualities" (41) in yourself, and also in your world. In other words, when you read literature, do you feel you understand yourself and your real world better?
  • The Combined Insight score (#3) is made up of the Personal and Non-Personal Insight scores (#1 and #2 in your reported scores).
• Empathy: Several items on the test measure "projective identification with fictional characters" (41). This means you tend to imagine a presence for characters that makes them seem real.
• Imagery Vividness: According to Miall and Kuiken, "this factor expresses imaginary elaboration of a literary world that becomes vividly present not only visually, but also in feeling, sound, and smell" (41).
• Leisure Escape: Here the questionnaire measures your tendency to approach reading as "pleasure and as an enjoyable and absorbing departure from everyday responsibilities" (42).
• Concern with Author: To what extent do you read to get to know authors and their "distinctive perspective, themes, and style, as well as the author's biographical place in a literary or intellectual tradition"? (42) Score number seven measures this factor.
• Story-Driven Reading: When you read, to what extent do you value the plot or story-line and emphasize "interesting action and compelling conclusions"? (42)
• Rejecting Literary Values: When you read, to what extent do you resist the ideas of "careful reading, of scholarly study, and of instructional presentation of literary texts"? Does reading literature sometimes tend to be an exercise of "compulsory and irrelevant task[s]" (42)?

What might patterns of high and low combinations of scores suggest?

As might be expected, according to Miall and Kuiken, the scores group into what they call "second order factors." These seven items are first order factors, while the second order factors are the things that might account for the way the scores pattern. Scores in Insight, Empathy, Imagery Vividness, and Leisure Escape do tend to correlate with one another while scores in Story-Driven Reading and Rejecting Literary Values also tend to correlate. This means that if you score higher in one set of second order factor scores, you may be predictably scpre lower in the other second order factor scores. Concern with the Author did not fit easily into this pattern.

Miall and Kuiken name the two second order factors constructing these groupings Experiencing and Literal Comprehension. Here our same table with the second order factors included across the bottom.

Here they define the two:

Thus, there is evidence that one second order factor collectively captures the engaging (Leisure Escape), perpetually replete (Imagery Vividness), and self-implicating (Empathy) modifications of meaning (Insight) warranting the label Experiencing (cf., Dewey, 1934). And, there is evidence that another second order factor collectively captures the the search for compelling narrative coherence (Story Driven Reading) and inattention to literary complexity (Rejection of Literary Values) warranting the label Literal Comprehension. (43)

Higher on the Right or the Left side?

If your scores tend to be higer on the left side, more like the Experiencing reader's (/^\__), or higher on the right side (__/\), more like the Literal Comprehension reader's, what does that mean?

In Miall and Kuiken's discussion of the questionnaire, they suggest multiple characteristics of persons who might fall into either group, characteristics that range from psychological factors to learning styles to behavioral differences.

For example, high scores in the Insight, Empathy, and Imagery Vividness scale tended to correlate with another test, called the Absorbtion Scale, which "reflects readiness to be captured by imaginal events (e.g., 'I can imagine things so vividly that they hold my attention as a good movie or story does') and readiness to modify them (e.g., 'I can imagine that my body is so heavy that I could not move if I wanted to')" (45). Therefore, it stands to reason that the Experiencing Reader rates high in intensity of imagination.

Moreover, they say, correlations with another scale, the Inventory of Learning Processes, suggests the Experiencing Reader has a learning strategy of "personalized elaboration of learning materials." This suggests that in learning situations like reading, this reader personalizes the material by creating new contexts where what he or she is learning also makes sense.

However, the Literal Comprehension Reader did not correlate with the intense imaginations of the Absorbtion Scale or the "personalized elaboration" processes of the Inventory of Learning Processes scale. Instead, Miall and Kuiken discuss indications that this style (in its Story-driven scores) correlates with high respect for tradition, "accepted rules of good conduct," "more frequent movie going and TV watching"--and perhaps with "a decisive. . . commitment to traditional values--and a particular attention to the moral implications of a story line" (48). In its Rejection of Literary Values aspect, the Literal Comprehension Reader may be "associated with frequent listening to popular music. . ., with frequent TV watching. . ., with involvement in sports. . . " (48).

What can we take from this about our own reading values or skills?

It could be that these second order factors are repeating an age-old division of readers into two groups, one of which has a frame of mind which is more congenial to the imaginative nature of literature and one of which is simply less so. But we may be able to learn more from these scores.

While Miall and Kuiken take pains to point out that this questionnaire does not measure one's skill at reading, they also do suggest that as self-perceptions of "beliefs, attitudes, predilections and behaviors," about reading literature, they might "indirectly reflect the skills that enable reading in the preferred manner" (49). The key phrase here is "reading in the preferred manner." It stands to reason that authors who create texts might expect that a reader read with empathy or insight or imagination.

Thus it stands to reason that if one set of the LRQ scales "indirectly reflects some of the skills by which readers make literary texts accessible, including the projective skills that enable empathetic reading and the skills that make texts personally meaningful, including the elaborative skills that enable personal insight" (49), it might make sense to emphasize learning more about these strategies for reading literature if you want to understand better how much of the best literature works.

According to Miall and Kuiken, some of the scores "reflect reader values (e.g. Rejection of Literary Values) and motives (e.g., Leisure Escape) [more] than reader competence" (49). These values and motives may suggest the social and cultural context which the reader brings to the situation. A reader might want to think about the various ways literature can be valued and what different motives are possible.

It might go without saying that all the scales suggest social contexts. For example, sensitivity to what Miall and Kuiken call "Literary Values" may reflect one's attitude toward schooling and academic values as much as literature. Everyone has beliefs about the role and value of literature in society and in our lives. Clearly these values would affect our approach to reading. And we can choose to change our values as we understand others.

Our conclusions may simply have to be that as readers of literature, we should cultivate our powers of imagination, hone our ability to be stimulated by literature, and be aware of beliefs and attitudes that may impede our ability to engage literature on its terms.

Further reading

For a more thorough description of the scores and their relationship to other scales and measures, consult the source reading for much of these comments:

David S. Miall and Don Kuiken. "Aspects of Literary Response: A New Questionnaire." Research in the Teaching of English. 29.1 (February 1995) 37-58.

Consult also the website which Miall and Kuiken sponsor:

David S. Miall and Don Kuiken. Reader-Response: Empirical Research on Literary Reading, University of Alberta, Canada http://www.ualberta.ca/~dmiall/reading/index.htm (21/12/2001).

Of interest may also be Don Kuiken's personal website which explains his current interests in dreams: http://web.psych.ualberta.ca/~dkuiken/personal/kuikend.html

Likewise, here is David Miall's personal web site: http://www.ualberta.ca/~dmiall/Miall.htm

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