Measuring strategic processing when students read multiple texts

This study explored the dimensionality of multiple-text comprehension strategies in a sample of 216 Norwegian education undergraduates who read seven separate texts on a science topic and immediately afterwards responded to a self-report inventory focusing on strategic multiple-text processing in that specific task context. Two dimensions were identified through factor analysis: one concerning the accumulation of pieces of information from the different texts and one concerning cross-text elaboration. In a subsample of 71 students who were also administered measures of intratextual and intertextual comprehension after responding to the strategy inventory, hierarchical multiple regression analysis indicated that self-reported accumulation of information and cross-text elaboration explained variance in intertextual comprehension even after variance associated with prior knowledge had been removed.