| The study examined variables that may be associated with public library involvement in adult literacy education. Organizational behavior theory suggested that both situational (or community) and strategic (or managerial) variables may be associated with organizational performance. The dependent variable, public library involvement in literacy, was computed from the library's reported number of literacy activities.;Data were collected with a questionnaire sent to a sample of U.S. public libraries; a total of 793 cases were used for analysis. For type of community (e.g., urban), a Chi square was computed that indicated a weak association with the dependent variable. A Pearson correlation coefficient was computed for the remaining 14 variables. Significant, positive associations with library involvement in literacy were found for four situational variables (population, ethnic diversity, English as a second language population, number of other community literacy providers) and for six strategic variables (number of volunteer hours, number of revenue sources, total library adult educational activities, total outreach activities, total cooperative activities, and positive attitude of the manager toward the library's role in literacy). A regression model of the ten significant variables noted above was constructed, which explained 60.4 percent of the variation of library involvement in literacy. The strategic variables as a group accounted for the largest amount of change in the variance of the dependent variable.;The study also explored what roles a library may assume in literacy education. Through factor analysis, two distinct roles were identified: direct instruction and services in support of literacy. A Pearson correlation coefficient was calculated for each of the roles and the independent variables used in the first analysis (excluding type of community). The correlations for these variables with the support services role are similar to those with involvement in literacy. For the direct instruction role, however, there are substantially lower correlations with other community literacy providers and all of the strategic variables. |
