Information-Seeking Behavior of Undergraduate, Graduate, and Doctoral Students: A Survey of Istanbul University, Turkey - Challenges of Information Management Beyond the Cloud - page 127

Fig. 2. "Feel prepared to conduct the required research" by academic level

3.2 Resources Used for Class Projects

To identify the types of resources students used to find information for their class projects
(e.g. papers, oral presentations), respondents were asked: “when writing a typical
research paper in a university class, where would you find most of your information?”
Overall, results reveal that, as many librarians and educators had previously assumed,
search engines (e.g. Google) were the primary choice of almost 90% of respondents for
class-related research (Fig. 3). The next most popular choice was constantly available
online resources (e.g. library e-resources and databases), which allow students to collect
information using their computers from any location, at any time (consistent with the
2009 PIL survey). Class materials (e.g. lecture notes and textbooks) were also valued
sources of information for the respondents. On the other hand, they were less likely to
use library print resources than library e-resources, and consulted Wikipedia to a lesser
extent than search engines, library e-resources and databases, class material and library
print resources. Taken together, these data suggest that students strongly preferred
research resources that were quickly and easily accessible.
The preference for search engines over library print resources, however, was not
limited to inexperienced undergraduate students. When cross-tabulating the frequency
of search engine use according to academic level and discipline, only discipline was
statistically significantly associated with frequency of use (chi-square= 24.632,
degrees of freedom: 12, p≤ 0.017). Figure 4 shows that the percentage of respondents
who frequently used search engines was evenly distributed among all disciplines.
However, the majority of frequent e-journal users (combined “always” and “often”
responses) were humanities students (48.1%), followed by health sciences with
47.5%, natural sciences with 46.7%, and social sciences with 39.1%. On the other
hand, respondents who rarely used search engines (combined “rarely” and “never”
responses) were primarily humanities students (30.4%), natural sciences (29.3%),
social sciences (28.4%), and health sciences (14.8%).