Home-Based Shared Book Reading and Developmental Outcomes in Young Children: A Systematic Review with Meta-Analyses

Claire Galea ^1* Alana Jones ¹ Katherine Ko ¹ Andrea Salins ^1,2 Serje Robidoux ¹ Clayton Noble ³ Genevieve McArthur ^1,2

• ¹ Faculty of Medicine, Health and Human Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
• ² Australian Catholic University, Sydney, Australia
• ³ United Way Australia, Sydney, Australia

The aim of this systematic review was to measure the strength of the relationship between home-based shared book reading and child development. We identified 46 studies (N = 56,576) that provided quantitative data on the home literacy environment and developmental outcomes for groups of 10 or more children (maximum N = 10,533) who had a mean age of less than 4 years, and had not commenced compulsory, formal schooling. Most studies (n = 28 / 46; 61%, N = 24,859) reported correlation coefficients, which were used to calculate mean effect sizes in a series of metaanalyses. The results estimated large and statistically significant relationships between the homebased shared book reading and developmental outcomes (r = 0.303, 95% CI = [0.258, 0.349]), language outcomes (r = 0.381, 95% CI = [0.289, 0.474]), and vocabulary outcomes (r = 0.314, 95% CI = [0.291, 0.336]); as well as a moderate and significant relationship between frequency of home-based shared book reading and expressive vocabulary (r = 0.259, 95% CI = [0.099, 0.419]).These findings indicate that home-based shared book reading is positively related to various developmental outcomes, particularly spoken language skills.