Factors that Influence Information-Seeking Behavior: The Case of Greek Graduate Students

How Information-Seeking Behavior, Essential Technologies, and Resilience Enhance the Academic Performance of Students

This study explores how the scholarly accomplishments of students might increment due to specific fundamental causes. The academic performance of the student was prioritized as a dependent variable, and the independent indicators chosen were “information seeking, IT ability, reading/writing capacity, and resilience.” At the same time, age, gender, marital status, and family income were included in the control variables. The research subject samples were limited to (N = 288) postgraduate students from three mega universities in Islamabad, Pakistan. Forward regression analysis was performed in this research to decide the impact of the indicators. The results indicate that information seeking affects academic performance positively and significantly. Essentially, the study revealed that information technology (IT) skills make a fundamentally positive and significant impact on academic performance. Reading and writing influenced academic performance considerably. In addition, resilience affected academic performance emphatically and essentially. Further, this research also noted the relationships between information-seeking behaviors, IT ability, reading/writing capacities, and resilience capabilities and the academic performance of students. These variables have a positive impact on the academic performance of students.

Information-seeking behaviour of undergraduate students: A developing country perspective

The purpose of this study is to investigate the information-seeking behaviour of the undergraduate students at Dhaka University, Bangladesh. Questionnaires were distributed to the students and data were collected over a period of 60 days between November and December 2017. Of the 450 questionnaires distributed, 339 were returned where the response rate was 75.33%. It was found that most undergraduates needed academic and job-related information. To meet those needs, they often went to the library to study and to prepare for competitive job exams. For doing academic work, they were heavily dependent on the class lectures and they were only slightly satisfied with the library services they get. This study brought out the findings that undergraduates’ information skills were poor and they were not aware of the library resources. The outcome of this research would help to develop information resources and services for the undergraduates in developing countries.

Relationship between information-seeking behavior and innovative behavior in Chinese nursing students

BACKGROUND

In the information-based economy, information literacy has become the foundation of scientific literacy, and provides the basis for innovative growth. Exploring the relationship between information-seeking behaviors and innovative behaviors of nursing students could help guide the development of information literacy education and training for nursing students. The relationship between information-seeking behavior and innovative behavior in nursing students has received little attention, however.

OBJECTIVE

This study aims to explore the relationship between information-seeking behavior and innovative behavior of nursing students.

METHODS

Nursing students in Xiangya Medical School, Central South University and Medical School of Hunan Normal University in the Chinese Province of Hunan were surveyed with an information-seeking behavior scale and an innovative behavior scale.

RESULTS

A total of 1247 nursing students were included in the final analysis. The results showed that both information-seeking behavior and innovative behavior were significantly better in undergraduates than in junior college nursing students (P < .01), and in postgraduates than in undergraduates (P < .01). The overall level of nursing students' information-seeking behavior was positively related to innovative behavior (r = 0.63, P < .01), and the 7 dimensions of information-seeking behavior were also correlated with innovative behavior in varying degrees. Furthermore, information utilization was proved to be the strongest predictor of innovative behavior.

CONCLUSION

Information-seeking behavior is positively associated with innovative behavior among nursing students. There is a need to integrate information literacy education with information retrieval courses, especially in the aspects of information utilization, retrieval, and assessment.

Searching and sourcing online academic literature

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore educational researchers’ online literature searching and sourcing strategies.

Design/methodology/approach

Adopting a multiple-case study approach, the authors conducted interviews and compared strategies employed by three groups of researchers: less-experienced doctoral students, experienced doctoral students, and junior faculty.

Findings

The results showed that the three groups differed in four searching strategies and two sourcing strategies. The former included: using and modifying keywords, doing advanced searches to narrow down or expand results, chaining, and networking to retrieve literature, while the latter consisted of: evaluating and selecting multiple-source articles, and self-monitoring the multiple-source searching process. The findings also revealed that the experienced doctoral students and junior faculty were able to adopt searching and sourcing strategies flexibly and simultaneously for the purpose of determining more relevant and useful sources. The findings suggest that these researchers, especially the less-experienced students, need specialized training to acquire sourcing strategies in order to critically evaluate relevant information or scholarly work to fulfill their research purposes.

Originality/value

Information seeking, an essential part of scholars’ work, has been widely examined across disciplines. However, few studies have explored scholars’ searching and sourcing behaviors for online academic literature. This study fulfilled the research gap.