Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Date of this Version
Winter 12-4-2021
Abstract
The collection of personal information became the most prominent threat associated with information consumption from the web. Existing research has not explored the information disclosure and protective behaviour of PhD research scholars. This investigation aimed to address the following objectives: (1) To find the Information-Seeking Behaviours of research scholars (2) To explore the research scholars’ attitudes towards personal information disclosure (3) To explore the protective behaviours of research scholars’ towards personal information disclosure. The study aims to contribute to existing knowledge in information disclosure behaviour and protective behaviour. The empirical research consists of thirty (30) PhD research scholars from the Department of Library and Information Science; Economics and Commerce of North-Eastern Hill University. These scholars’ were selected using a convenient sampling technique to get a prompt response. Descriptive statistics were employed to analyse the data. The results showed that research scholar’s information need on research topic accounted to (60%) daily and used the Internet daily. The findings showed that most research scholars’ do not trust the website and consider their personal information as unsafe on the web. Most of them reported having refused to give their personal identifiable information while considerable percentages are unfamiliar with the privacy emerging technologies (Example: Tor browser, Remove malware/Spyware, cookies, anonymous browsing, etc.). This study provides guidelines for the research scholars’ to protect their personal information, thus, preventing scholars from privacy risks. The study contributes new knowledge concerning privacy concerns thus, broadened the context of personal disclosure in the online scenario.