Surveys have often been used to find out what children were reading in any given time period. This article examines a range of surveys taken over the 1940s and 1950s in Australia and New Zealand, focusing on W. J. Scott's 1947 survey of New Zealand children's reading habits, and Connell, Francis, and Skilbeck's account of Australian adolescents' reading habits published in 1957. Rather than focusing on the results of the surveys themselves, however, this article will address the concerns of those conducting the surveys – namely that readership of inappropriate books and pernicious comics would degrade children's intelligence and morals. These concerns are vitally present in the analysis of the results that they publish. While historians of reading have all made important contributions to their field through their use of historical reading surveys, few historians have sought to focus on the motivations and concerns of adults in conducting such surveys. This article will show that the analysis of the results recorded in these surveys are just as worthy of examination as the results themselves.

中文翻译：

---

“既文明又满足的书籍”：调查1940年代和1950年代澳大利亚和新西兰儿童的阅读习惯

调查经常被用来找出孩子在任何给定时间段内阅读的内容。本文考察了 1940 年代和 1950 年代在澳大利亚和新西兰进行的一系列调查，重点是 WJ Scott 1947 年对新西兰儿童阅读习惯的调查，以及 Connell、Francis 和 Skilbeck 于 1957 年发表的对澳大利亚青少年阅读习惯的描述。然而，本文不是关注调查本身的结果，而是解决进行调查的人的担忧——即不合适的书籍和有害漫画的读者会降低儿童的智力和道德。这些担忧在对他们发表的结果的分析中非常重要。虽然阅读史学家都通过使用历史阅读调查对他们的领域做出了重要贡献，但很少有历史学家试图关注成年人进行此类调查的动机和关注点。本文将表明，对这些调查中记录的结果的分析与结果本身一样值得检验。