Information Letter for guardians: Comics as a gateway to reading -study for grade 3

Dear guardian,

You and your child have been invited to take part in a study to examine the impact of comic magazines delivered to the home on third-graders’ interest in reading. In the study, the child will receive Aku Ankka magazines delivered to the home for three months. The subscription period is free of charge for the families and ends after three months. At school, the children will complete reading assignments and a questionnaire on reading in January and May. Guardians are asked to complete short questionnaires at the same time.

We ask guardians to discuss the study with their child and fill in an electronic consent form concerning participation in the study. The link to the form can be found in the Wilma message sent by the school.

The research is carried out in cooperation with the Education Division of the City of Helsinki and the EDUCA - Education for the Future Flagship, led by the University of Jyväskylä.

1. What is the study about?

We know that good reading skills support children's learning. However, not all children have enough material to read at home to support reading as a hobby. The aim of the Lukuportti project (‘Sarjakuvat porttina lukemiseen’ (Comics as a gateway to reading)) is to support children's interest in reading. To carry out the project, Sanoma Media Finland (Sanoma) will deliver the research material, i.e. the Aku Ankka comic magazines, to the homes of pupils in Finnish-language schools. Egmont Story House AB (Egmont) will deliver Kalle Anka comic magazines to pupils in Swedish-language schools.

The participants of the study include the Finnish-language /Finnish- and Swedish-language 3rd grade classes in the City of Helsinki. The classes are randomly divided into two groups: test and control classes. Pupils in the test classes will receive Aku Ankka magazines delivered to the home weekly for three months from February to April, followed by pupils in the control classes from June to August. Pupils who are already subscribed to Aku Ankka/Kalle Anka can still take part in the study. In that case, they will receive the monthly Aku Ankka Klassikko/Kalle Anka Klassiker comic magazine for three months. Teachers will also receive Aku Ankka/Kalle Anka magazines at the teachers’ lounge. We will send materials to guardians about the importance of reading and how to support their child's reading.

Participation in the study is voluntary (see section 8). In the study, pupils take part in an assessment of reading skills in January and May as part of their regular school activities. The assessment includes tasks related to reading and language skills, as well as a short questionnaire related to reading. Pupils take the assessment online using the ViLLe platform. Each assessment session takes one lesson. All 3rd grade pupils complete the tasks, and teachers receive feedback on the results of the tasks completed by the pupils in their own class. Only the tasks completed by pupils who participate in the study will be used for research purposes. Teachers are not informed about which pupils are taking part in the study.

In addition, guardians will complete a short questionnaire (about 10 minutes) in January and May on reading at home.

3. Why has your child been invited to take part in the study?

The study is part of the City of Helsinki's key objective of supporting children and young people's literacy.

4. What kind of data will the study collect?

Delivery of comics

To have comics delivered to your child's home, you will be asked on the research consent form (see section 8) to provide the address where the comics will be delivered. The University of Jyväskylä will forward the address information to Sanoma Media Finland / Egmont Story House AB. In this study, the subscription period is fixed-term and one-off. The subscription will not be extended automatically. The address information will only be used for the duration of this study, after which Sanoma/Egmont will delete it from its records. The contact information obtained from the study will not be used for marketing purposes. Sanoma/Egmont may nevertheless contact the families through different marketing channels not related to this project.

Data to be collected in the study

The study collects data from pupils, guardians and teachers and combines them with register data at Statistics Finland. The data collected will only be used for scientific research and the assessment of education. In the data used for the analyses, direct personal data have been removed or converted into numerical identifiers that cannot be used to identify individual people. The personal data processed in the study and how they are processed are described in more detail in the privacy notice.

The study collects information on a pupil's interest in reading and reading skills. Data are collected from the pupils themselves as well as their guardians, who assess the child's interest in reading and the practices related to reading at home. The data are combined with information from the City of Helsinki on the pupil's school, class, mother tongue syllabus and gender. Direct personal data from the City of Helsinki, such as the name and the pupil's learner ID, are used to combine different data. Responses from pupils and guardians participating in the study will be supplemented with register information. Demographic data (e.g. gender, age, mother tongue, place of birth and education) available to Statistics Finland will be included, as appropriate, concerning the pupil as well as the guardians.

Some of the pupils participating in the study will have participated in a trial for two-year pre-primary education and/or an intervention study on literacy skills during the academic year 2024-2025. If the guardian consents, these data can be combined with the data collected by Statistics Finland in this study.

5. What will be done with the information collected?

Sanoma Media Finland / Egmont Story House AB will only use the address information they receive for the delivery of comics for the duration of the study, and they will delete the address information provided to them once the three-month delivery period has ended.

All research data are only available to the researchers and will not be disclosed to commercial operators such as Sanoma Media Finland / Egmont Story House AB.

Pupil assessment data are stored on a secure server of the University of Turku, and the research consent forms as well as responses to questionnaires from guardians and teachers are stored on a secure server of the University of Jyväskylä. The data are merged at the University of Jyväskylä and the personal identifiers in the data are replaced by numerical identifiers that cannot be used to identify individual people, classes or schools.

The research teams submit the pupil assessment data and the questionnaire responses from guardians and teachers to Statistics Finland, where they are supplemented with register data and the direct personal data are removed. Researchers use this register data only via Statistics Finland's remote access service. Only authorised researchers can access the data maintained by the University of Jyväskylä and Statistics Finland.

The results of the study are always reported in such a way that individuals, classes and schools cannot be identified.

6. Would you like to know more?

If you have any questions or would like more information about the study, please email sarjakuvatutkimus@jyu.fi. You can also contact the principal of your school.

7. Privacy protection and your rights

Your own and your child's personal data will be processed confidentially. Only authorised researchers will have access to the research data. The data collected and how they are processed and stored is described in detail in the privacy notice.

Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), you have the right to access your child's data, request rectification or restriction of processing and object to the processing and transfer of the data. To exercise these rights, you can send an email to sarjakuvatutkimus@jyu.fi.

If you have any additional questions or requests regarding the processing of your personal data, please send an email to sarjakuvatutkimus@jyu.fi.

8. Participation in the study

Participation in the study is completely voluntary for the pupils and guardians. The processing of personal data is based on scientific research carried out in the public interest and the statutory quality assessment of education. Guardians have received a link to the research consent form in a Wilma message sent by the school.

Contact information:

Jenni Ruotsalainen, responsible researcher
University of Jyväskylä
jenni.m.ruotsalainen@jyu.fi

Sanni Heikkinen, research coordinator
University of Jyväskylä
sarjakuvatutkimus@jyu.fi

Marja-Kristiina Lerkkanen, project leader
University of Jyväskylä
marja-kristiina.lerkkanen@jyu.fi