چکیده:
This study aims to introduce the information seeking anxiety construct as a
phenomenon among postgraduate students. It also presents the Information Seeking
Anxiety Scale (ISAS) as a valid and reliable instrument. Further, the current study
investigates the prevalence of information seeking anxiety among postgraduate
students at a research-intensive university in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Results of
the study revealed that while information seeking anxiety is present among the
studied students, the overall level is not high. Additionally, Different levels (low,
mild, moderate and severe levels) of the information seeking anxiety construct
were reported to have experienced by 96.5% of the postgraduate students at the
sampled university.
خلاصه ماشینی:
Further, the current study investigates the prevalence of information seeking anxiety among postgraduate students at a research-intensive university in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
,2004; Van Kmapen, 2003), research anxiety (Kracker, 2002; Onwuegbuzie, 1997), computer anxiety (Jerabek, Meyer,&Cordinak, 2001; Kohrman, 2002; Turkzadeh& Angulo, 1992), Internet anxiety (Ben Omran, 2001), mathematics and statistics anxiety (Onwuegbuzie& Wilson, 2003), foreign language anxiety (Bailey, Onwuegbuzie,& Daley, 1998), writing anxiety (Onwuegbuzie, 1997), and test anxiety (Hill &Wigfield, 1984).
As such, the aim of the current study is to deepen further understanding of this problem by developing an instrument to measure levels of information seeking anxiety and validating this scale in a Malaysian research intensive university.
In the first step, a list of ninety-four potential key components was gleaned from several sources include: a) extensive review of the literature in the areas of library anxiety, computer anxiety, Internet anxiety, information anxiety, information seeking process, and other related areas; b) existing instruments in aforementioned constructs; c) interviews with ten postgraduate students to identify what made them anxious when they were seeking information related to their research in libraries or information systems and d) consultation with the Library and Information Science (LIS) faculty members at the university.
Conversely, results of the study revealed that postgraduate students reported to have experienced the lowest level of information seeking anxiety related to “barriers associated with computers, the Internet and electronic resources” sub-scale (M=7.