Digital Multimodal Texts, Reading Interest, and Primary Reading Comprehension: A Baseline-Sensitive Quasi-Experimental Study in Indonesian Grade 6

Digital multimodal texts are increasingly used in literacy instruction, yet their contribution to primary reading comprehension remains contingent on design quality, task demands, and learner characteristics. This study examined whether a curriculum-embedded digital multimodal intervention improved Grade 6 students’ reading comprehension more than a text-only condition and whether reading interest conditioned the observed outcomes. A quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design was implemented with two intact classes at SDN Wangkelang III, Majalengka, Indonesia (n = 34; 17 students per group). The intervention integrated written text, images, and audio into an Indonesian-language unit on “Exploring Outer Space,” whereas the comparison class used unimodal text. Instruments comprised a 30-item reading-comprehension test based on Barrett’s taxonomy and a 20-item reading-interest questionnaire (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.825 and 0.838). The multimodal class achieved the higher posttest mean (83.18 vs. 70.53), and the original posttest comparison favored the intervention (p = 0.031). Reading interest showed a significant main effect (p = 0.030), whereas the group × interest interaction was not significant (p = 0.490). Reanalysis showed that the multimodal class started from a stronger baseline, both groups improved substantially, gain scores were comparable, and the adjusted group effect weakened after controlling for pretest differences. Digital multimodal texts appear promising, especially for inferential and appreciative comprehension, but their apparent advantage should be interpreted cautiously. By integrating recent work on digital reading, motivation, and comprehension instruction, the article offers a baseline-sensitive account of how multimodal design and reading interest shape classroom reading outcomes and identifies priorities for future multi-site intervention research.