I give permission for
my work to be published in the SIRLS LIS Learning Showcase.
Fall 2003 IRLS 587
Dr. Coleman
Research Proposal
Report
Chen Fang
Table of Contents
3. Methods Used
5. Conclusion
6. References
7. Appendix1 : Research Instrument
8. Apendix 2: Informed Consent Form
Differences of Information Seeking Behavior between
Undergraduate and Graduate Students and Implications to Academic Information
Services
Introduction: Statement of Problem
Library and
information science research has long been interested in investigating
information seeking behavior within the academic community across study groups
and disciplines. Focus groups of these studies are always divided into three
major categories: undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty and research
scientists (sometimes the later two groups are combined together). The
underlying assumption of this division could be that undergraduates'
information seeking behavior would differ from the other two groups because of
their unique information seeking needs and not-fully-developed information
seeking skills. Prior studies on disciplinary differences in the information
seeking behavior of above groups have been carried on broadly with various
focuses. Although differences exist among different groups, similar information
seeking patterns could also be expected because either undergraduate or
graduate students are all socialized and indoctrinated into the research
process of their academic disciplines through coursework and lectures offered
by faculties. Major theories and methods for seeking information to complete
course assignments are similar regardless of disciplinary differences in a broad
sense (Smart, Feldman, & Ethington, 2000). Prior
information seeking studies also support the notion that users exhibit common
characteristics of information behaviors at different stages of the information
seeking process (Bilal & Kirby, 2002).
While many studies
have been done, trying to establish the external correlation between different
disciplines and groups in terms of information seeking behavior in the academic
settings, not as much as attention has been given to examine the internal
relationship within groups, especially between undergraduate and graduate
students. This research is proposed to examine this problem and try to draw a
line between undergraduate and graduate students' information seeking behavior,
thus to lead to further thoughts on improving academic information services.
Literature Review
A significant body
of literature exists on the information seeking behavior of different groups
across disciplines with various focuses. In terms of information seeking
patterns (either using library or not), for example, Brown (1999) and Whitmire
(2002) found that physical sciences majors (both research scientists and
undergraduate students) used indexes to find journal articles. Ellis (1989)
found that social scientists employed many information seeking strategies
including citation chaining and browsing the stacks. Whitmire (2002) extended
the same findings of social science majors to the group of undergraduates.
However, comparing the above two disciplines (physics versus social science), Ellis (1989) found no difference of information seeking
behavior among higher level researchers, while Whitmire (2002) noticed
differences among undergraduate students. Prior research stops at this point,
with a lack of further exploration of the underlining implication to practical
world.
Research study on
information needs is another popular topic in the field. For example, Pelze & Leysen (1988) sought
to evaluate veterinary medical students' perception of the demands of their
curriculum for information seeking. Thomas (1993) investigated new doctoral
students' information needs based on their experience gaps or anomalies in
their knowledge structure. Fidzani (1998) found
consulting requirements from graduate students for information resources to
meet their needs for subject-oriented coursework and project/research work.
Another hot topic
within the library information science research is from the psychological
perspective of information seekers. Pennanen & Vakkari (2003) analyzed students' information needs in
terms of conceptual understanding of the topic they propose to study and its
consequences for the search process and outcome. Whitmire (2003) examined the
relationship between undergraduates' epistemological beliefs and their
information seeking behavior.
Research in the
field is not restricted to the above three topics. However in previous
researches, we could see the deficiency of research concentrating on comparing
undergraduate and graduate students' information seeking behavior in terms of
their information needs and seeking strategies. On the other hand, research
focused on undergraduate and graduate student's information seeking behavior
has pragmatic value for academic universities to improve their information
services (e.g. libraries) particularly in terms of integrating into curricula
to meet students' primary information needs. Thus,
Research Questions
The hypothesis of
this research is that different disciplinary coursework and level of competency
requirements produce differences in information seeking behavior between
undergraduate and graduate students. The main research questions are: do the
disciplinary coursework and competency requirement lead to the differences in
students' information seeking behavior? What are the differences of information
seeking behavior between undergraduate and graduate students? Does it have any
practical implication to improve academic information services (e.g. libraries)
in terms of curricula integration?
Methodology
Research Model
We are going to
use part of Biglan's (1973a, 1973b) typology of academic disciplines for the
research. Being widely used to investigate disciplinary differences in several
areas in higher education, Biglan's model is accepted as “the best known
classification of university academic fields” (Hativa
& Marincovich, 1995). Some previous research
related to our topic using Biglan's model are: undergraduate learning
(Pike & Killian, 2001), learning styles (Kolb, 1981), characteristics of
graduate students (Malaney, 1986).
Biglan's model
classifies academic disciplines along three dimensions: hard versus soft (level
of paradigm development), pure versus applied (practical application of the
research), and life versus nonlife (degree of
involvement with living or organic objects of study) (Biglan, 1973a, 1973b;
Whitmire, 2002). Whitmire (2002) proposed the first exploration of using
Biglan's model for library and information science research since it has been
“rigorously tested and verified through empirical research” in various studies
across disciplines. She examined the differences in undergraduates' information
seeking behavior patterns among various academic disciplines. She also pointed
out the necessity of future research to investigate differences of information
seeking behavior among graduate students and faculty in difference disciplines
using Biglan's model as a measurement. This research follows Whitmire's idea
but limits the focus group only to students, both undergraduate and graduate,
and extends the topic to examine the differences between these two groups using
Biglan's model.
Samples &
Population
Data for this
research are going to be gathered using the 2003 College Student Experiences
Questionnaire (CSEQ). The CSEQ measures the quality of students' college
experiences. This research will focus on one particular aspect of the CSEQ
measurements for student college activities, namely information seeking
behavior.
According to
Biglan's model of academic discipline classification, a same number of samples
will be drawn randomly by student ID from a variety of departments to reflect
discipline differences among three dimensions (discipline variables are
discussed below) at the
Since the samples
are going to be collected within the
Variables
The research will
adopt the Biglan's model and follow Whitmire's (2002) research methods.
Variables are going to be focused on four areas: 1) background characteristics,
2) academic discipline/major, 3) information seeking behavior, 4) course
learning requirements.
Background Characteristics
Students'
background characteristics variables include: age, gender (female/male), and
current status (freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, graduate students or
unclassified), proposed degree (baccalaureate, master, PhD), as well as current
GPA status. Comparisons are based on the degree status.
Academic Discipline/major
According to
Biglan's model, academic disciplines are divided using three dimensions: 1)
hard-soft, 2) pure-applied, 3) life-nonlife. Adopting
Whitmire's (2002) classification, disciplines are
divided as follows:
¨
Hard
disciplines: physical sciences and engineering
¨
Soft
disciplines: humanities, business, social sciences, and education
¨
Pure
disciplines: physical sciences, humanities, and social sciences.
¨
Applied
disciplines: engineering, business, and education
¨
Life
disciplines: social sciences and education
¨
Nonlife disciplines: physical sciences, engineering,
humanities, and business
Students are going
to classify themselves by answering the question from the CSEQ: “Which of these
fields best describes your major, or your anticipated
major?”
Information Seeking Behavior
Both undergraduate
and graduate students' information seeking behavior data are going to be
collected from their self-reported measures of their library use on the Library section of the 2003 CSEQ.
Students will respond to the following question using the scales from 1 to 4 (1
= very often, 4 = never): “In your experience at the institution during the
current school year, about how often have you done each of the following?”:
¨
Used
the library as a quite place to read or study materials you brought with you.
¨
Found
something interesting while browsing in the library.
¨
Asked
a librarian or staff member for help in finding information on some topic.
¨
Read
assigned materials other than textbooks in the library (reserve reading, etc.).
¨
Used
an index or database (computer, card catalog, etc.) to find material on same
topic.
¨
Developed
a bibliography or reference list for a term paper or other report.
¨
Gone
back to read a basic reference or document that other authors
referred to.
¨
Made a
judgment about the quality of information obtained from the library, World Wide
Web, or other resources.
Course Learning Requirements
Data for course
learning requirements of both undergraduate and graduate students are going to
be gathered using part of the Course
Learning section of the 2003 CSEQ which highlights the information seeking
needs. Apply the same scale and answer to the same question in the “information
seeking behavior” section. Categories are:
¨
Completed
the assigned readings for class.
¨
Contributed
to class discussions.
¨
Developed
a role play, case study, or simulation for a class.
¨
Tried
to see how different facts and ideas fit together.
¨
Summarized
major points and information from your class notes or readings.
¨
Worked
on a class assignment, project, or presentation with other students.
¨
Applied
material learned in a class to other areas (your job or internship, other
courses, relationships with friends, family, co-worker, etc.)
¨
Used
information or experience from other areas of y our life (job, internship,
interactions with others) in class discussions or assignments.
¨
Worked
on a paper or project where you had to integrate ideas from various sources.
Research Plan:
Analyses of Data
The research
hypothesis is that “different disciplinary coursework and level of competency
requirements produce differences in information seeking behavior between
undergraduate and graduate students”. The t
test can be used to test the differences in the information seeking behavior of
undergraduate and graduate students in different disciplines along Biglan's
dimension. This method compares the two groups (undergraduates versus graduate
students) to determine how much the mean of one group differs from the other
group's mean.
Pilot Study Results
The proposed
sample study of this research topic is huge since it integrates students from a
variety of discipline and both undergraduate and graduate student. I should
have conducted a bigger pilot study which involves more students. However, due
to time constraints, access limitation to student information (I have no
complete student ID database) and lack of research authority (I'm not the
“official” data-collector from the university), it was only feasible for me to
do the pilot study with my two friends. One is a junior student from the
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering; another is a Ph.D. student
from the Department of Education. This sample could not be strictly deemed as
“random” sample. Besides, with only two samples, I could not conduct the needed
statistical analyses of means as well as the t test. So the result of this pilot study is only raw numbers.
The two samples
are classified into several categories (Table I):
Table I
Category Classification
|
|
Hard Discipline |
Soft Discipline |
|
Undergraduate Student |
X (ECE) |
|
|
Graduate Student |
|
X (Education) |
The differences in
the information seeking behavior patterns of these two samples are indicated in
Table II.
Table II
Differences of Information Seeking Behavior Patterns
|
|
Hard/Undergraduate |
Soft/Graduate |
|
Used library to read/study |
3 |
4 |
|
Found interest in library |
1 |
3 |
|
Asked librarian for help |
2 |
2 |
|
Read in reserve/reference section |
2 |
3 |
|
Used indexes/databases |
2 |
4 |
|
Developed bibliography |
2 |
3 |
|
Browse stacks |
3 |
4 |
|
Used information wisely |
4 |
4 |
Note: 1=never, 4=very often
Ideally the data
analyses should be based on the means of feedback for every question asked. In
this pilot study, data reflect only one person's opinion. Based on the raw
data, I propose two hypotheses as the result of this step:
I.
Students
in soft disciplines engaged in more information-seeking activities than
students in hard disciplines
II.
Graduate
students engaged in more and advanced information-seeking activities than
undergraduate students.
Table III
indicates the differences of course requirements for these two sample students.
Table III
Differences of Course Requirements
|
|
Hard/Undergraduate |
Soft/Graduate |
|
Completed required readings |
4 |
4 |
|
Contributed to class discussion |
2 |
4 |
|
Developed role play/case study |
2 |
3 |
|
Related facts and ideas |
2 |
4 |
|
Summarized class notes |
3 |
4 |
|
Class assignments with group |
2 |
4 |
|
Applied learned knowledge to practice |
3 |
3 |
|
Integrate practice to coursework |
2 |
3 |
|
Integrate various information |
4 |
4 |
Note: 1=never, 4=very often
Based on the raw
data, I propose two hypotheses as the result of this step:
I.
Requirements
for students in soft and hard disciplines are similar.
II.
Graduate
students have much advanced requirements from major study than undergraduate
students.
Conclusion
Certain types of
academic library services may favor one group to the others. The proposed
result of this research is to test the hypothesis and lead to further
discussion on how to improve academic information services, especially on how
library integrate into curriculum development to serve both undergraduate and
graduate students.
Although the above
four hypothetical results from the pilot study still need more proofs from
bigger sample data analyses to test its validity and reliability, they can
somewhat answer the research questions which I raised at the beginning of the
research. Table IV shows the research question to data collection instrument
matrix.
Table IV
Research Question – Instrument Matrix
|
Research
Questions |
Do the disciplinary coursework and competency
requirement lead to the differences in students' ISB? |
What are the differences of ISB between
undergraduate and graduate students? |
Does it have any practical implication to improve
academic information services in terms of curricula integration? |
|
Q1 (age) |
|
|
|
|
Q2 (sex) |
|
|
|
|
Q3 (degree
status) |
X |
X |
|
|
Q4 (GPA) |
X |
X |
|
|
Q5 (proposed
degree) |
X |
X |
|
|
Q6
(discipline/major) |
X |
X |
|
|
Q7 (library use) |
X |
X |
X |
|
Q8 (course
learning) |
X |
X |
X |
For the first
question, obvious result can be found to indicate that disciplinary coursework
and competency requirement (Table II) do lead to the differences in students'
information seeking behavior. For the second question, graduate students engage
in more and advanced information-seeking activities than undergraduate
students. As for the implication to improve academic library services, needs
for curricula integration can be seen esp. for the undergraduate education.
As for the design
of this research, I adopted the research methodology of Whitmire'
research about differences in undergraduates' information seeking behavior
patterns among various academic disciplines (2002). It's easy to follow
someone's work but hard to initiate new ideas. One big problem of this research
is about the quantification of findings. I should admit that the first two
research questions I proposed are somewhat self-evident. If the research could
quantify the research, it will be more valuable. But I was kind of stuck there
because of the lack of data. If I would be able to continue this study with
more data, it would make more sense.
Furthermore,
practically speaking, the research on information seeking behavior of
undergraduate and graduate students are not done enough so far. Nowadays more
and more academic libraries are working on integrating their services to
curricula development; this would be a valuable spot to look at.
References
2003
College Student Experiences Questionnaire (CSEQ). College
Student Experiences Questionnaire Research Program,
Biglan, A. (1973a).
The characteristics of subject matter in different academic areas. Journal of Applied Psychology, 57,
195-203.
Biglan, A.
(1973b). Relationships between subject matter characteristics
and the structure and output of university departments. Journal of Applied Psychology, 57,
204-213.
Bilal, D. & Kirby, J. (2002). Differences and similarities in
information seeking: children and adults as web users. Information Processing and Management, 38, 649-670.
Brown, C.M.
(1999). Information seeking behavior of scientists in the electronic
information age: Astronomers, chemists, mathematicians, and physicians. Journal of the American Society for
Information Sciences, 50, 929-943.
Cole, C., Cantero, P. & Ungar, A.
(2000). The development of a diagnostic-prescriptive tool for
undergraduate seeking information for a social science/humanities assignment.
III. Enabling devices. Information
Processing and Management, 36, 481-500.
Ellis, D. (1989). A behavioral approach to information retrieval system design.
The Journal of Documentation, 45,
171-212.
Fidzani, B.T. (1998). Information needs and
information-seeking behavior of graduate students at the
Hativa, N., & Marincovich,
M. (1995). Disciplinary
differences in teaching and learning: Implications for practice (New Directions
in Teaching and Learning Number 64).
Given,
L.M. (2002). The
academic and the everyday: Investigating the overlap in mature undergraduates'
information-seeking behaviors. Library
& Information Science Research, 24, 17-29.
Kolb, D. (1981). Learning styles and disciplinary differences. In Today's students and their needs. In A. Chickering & R. Havighurst
(Eds.), The
Kuhlthau, C. C. (1991). Inside the search process:
information seeking from the user's perspective. Journal of the American Society for
Information Science. 42(5), 361-371.
Patten, M.L.
(2002). Understanding research methods: An overview of the essentials (third
edition). Pyrczak Publishing.
Malaney, G.D. (1986). Characteristics
of graduate students in the Biglan areaas of study.
Research in Higher Education, 25,
328-341.
Pelzer,
L.N. & Leysen, J.M. (1988). Library use and information-seeking
behavior of veterinary medical students. Bulletin of the Medical Association, 76(4), 328-333.
Pennanen, M. & Vakkari,
P. (2003). Students'
conceptual structure, search process, and outcome while preparing a research
proposal: A longitudinal case study. Journal
of the American Sociey for Information Science and
Technology, 54(8), 759-770.
Pike,
G.R., & Killian, T.S. (2001). Reported gains in student learning: Do academic
disciplines make a difference? Research
in Higher Education, 42, 429-454.
Smart, J.C.,
Feldman, K.A., &
Thomas, N.P.
(1993). Information seeking and the nature of relevance: PhD student
orientation as an exercise of information retrieval. Proceedings of ASIS Annual Meeting, 30, 126-130.
Whitmire, E.
(2002). Disciplinary differences and undergraduates'
information-seeking behavior. Journal
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Whitmire, E.
(2003). Epistemological beliefs and the information-seeking
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& Information Science Research, 25, 127-142.
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N.J. & Seggern, M.V. (2001). General information
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& User Services Quarterly, 41(2), 159-169.
Appendix I
Selected Questions from College Student
Experiences Questionnaire (CSEQ) Form 2003.
1. Age
¨
19 or
younger
¨
20-23
¨
24-29
¨
30-39
¨
40-55
¨
Over
55
2. Sex
¨
male
¨
female
3. What is your classification in college?
¨
freshman/first-year
¨
sophomore