Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Date of this Version
Spring 4-27-2015
Abstract
Abstract.
This paper presents findings for a research study which investigated the information behaviour of final students of Mzuzu University in Malawi. Even after being imparted with necessary skills in how to search and locate relevant information, the author observed that students still find difficulties to find information that they require.
A paper based questionnaire was designed and administered to two hundred and fifty four (254) final year students belonging to the five faculties of the University of which two hundred and forty three (243) responded to the questionnaire A mixed method questionnaire survey was used. Stratified sampling in which students were divided into different strata according to the faculty they belong to was adopted. The Kuhlthau’s Information Search Process model was used as a guiding theoretical framework for this study.
The results show that most of the students relied heavily on the Internet (64.6%), search engines like Google (56.2%) and the OPAC (45%). When searching for information, the majority of students did not use truncation (98.3%) or Boolean logic (98.8%).It has also been established that students did not fully conform to Kuhlthau’s