An Analytical Study of Reading Habits of Undergraduate Students

Reading habit opens up the door to succeed in learning. It is the soul of education. It is therefore essential to explore the reading habits of professional students to access their interest in reading in turn their personality, communication skills. The practice of reading does not mirror the lifestyle of most undergraduates in Academics and Universities. It is assumed that quite handful of professional students are aware of how to read, what to read, when to read and where to read. Basically, reading for refreshment or relieving stress is quite common among the educated population.The study is a concise survey on “Reading Habits of Professional Students.” Data is collected using a validated online questionnaire. It is analysed using Pandas – a Python library for analysis and manipulation of data. Further matplotlib – a popular python package for data visualisation is used to showcase the results in the form of plots and graphs. Interpretations are drawn based on the varied responses from the respondents. The findings disclosed that nearly all the respondents understand the importance of reading. The study revealed that 91.95% love to read from their various fields while 8.05% showed their unwillingness towards book reading. 43.34% of the student population likes reading fiction books, whereas only 1.24% of professional students go with non-fictional books besides 55.42% showed interest to read both. It is observed that reading habit among professional students pursuing their engineering stream is encouraging. It is recommended that students should develop and show curiosity towards book reading. Parents should function as catalysts encouraging their children by supplementing them with needed reading resources besides creating a conducive atmosphere for them.