Web users read more of a story, study finds

By David Derbyshire
The Telegraph
Mar. 31, 2007

People looking at news websites spend longer reading stories than those reading print newspapers, according to research.

A laboratory study of 600 people found that online readers on average got through three quarters of each story they chose to read.

When presented with identical stories in a broadsheet newspaper, readers managed just 62 per cent of the text, while readers of print tabloids gave up after reading 57 per cent, according to the Poynter Institute in America.

The study, presented at a meeting of the American Association of Newspaper Editors in Washington DC, challenges conventional wisdom that online readers lack the attention span of their print counterparts.

Sara Quinn, a co-author of the study, said: "We were amazed by these numbers. A surprise was that a larger percentage of story text was read online than in print."

The findings are based on studies of volunteers asked to look at a selection of identical stories on a news website or in newsprint for 15 minutes while wearing "eyeball tracking" glasses. The glasses record where the wearer's gaze is resting at any time.