Title:
AN ANALYSIS OF THE EFFECTS OF STUDENTS’ LITERACY SELF-EFFICACY PRACTICES ON THE SCHOLARLY INFORMATION MANAGEMENT AMONG POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS

Authors:
Leah Njiru, Dr Ruth Thinguri and Dr Mary Chui

Abstract:
There has been a rapid growth of information and consequently the ability of students to be information literate has also become critical as it is needed for their scholarly information management. However, postgraduate students in Kiambu County universities struggle with scholarly information management and take too long to complete their thesis or scholarly works. This study investigated the effects of students’ literacy self-efficacy practices on the scholarly information management. The study adopted information management theory and information literacy theory since the two theories state that information literacy practices influence scholarly information management. A mixed methodology with concurrent triangulation design was used to conduct the study. It allowed the researcher to collect and analyze qualitative and quantitative data concurrently. Generalization was made based on findings from the collected data. The target population was the public and private university personnel and postgraduate students which comprised of 2,651 individuals. The target population included 10 librarians, 11 supervisors, and 2,451 postgraduate students. The study participants were selected through purposive and simple random procedures. The sample population included 245 postgraduate students from four selected universities 10 library staff and 11 supervisors from the selected universities. Data was collected using self-administered questionnaires for students and interview schedules for the supervisors. Piloting of the instruments was done among postgraduate students in University of Nairobi to ensure certainty of instruments and the retest method helped estimate a reliability of (r=0.70). To ensure validity of the research instruments, the researcher constantly sought guidance from the supervisors. The researcher also ensured dependability of instruments by involving different categories of respondents and credibility of research instruments through various procedures such, as administering of questionnaires and conducting interviews. In order to achieve the objective of the study, both qualitative and quantitative data were gathered and analyzed to generate descriptive, inferential and qualitative statistics. Quantitative data collected was analyzed using SPSS version 21 while thematic analysis was used to analyze qualitative data. The analyzed quantitative data was presented using Tables. Qualitative data were presented thematically using themes generated from the study objectives. The study findings indicated that postgraduate students’ literacy self-efficacy practices had positive effect on the students’ scholarly information management (SIM). The researcher recommends Special attention to be accorded to self-efficacy practices related to postgraduate learners SIM since most of them struggle with such issues leading to negative effects on their SIM. Of great concern is computer competence which is very instrumental in dissertation development and writing, which ...