Seeking academic information on the Internet: Doctoral students' Internet self-efficacy and emotions

Abstract

The main purpose of this proposed study is to understand the relationship between doctoral students' Internet self-efficacy and their affections when seeking academic information on the Internet. A structured questionnaire will be designed and conducted for 300 doctoral students. Participants' demographic information, information seeking behavior, Internet self-efficacy, and emotions will be measured in this questionnaire by using Information-Seeking Behavior Scale (ISBS), Internet Self-efficacy Scale (ISS), and the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS). For the predicted outcomes, doctoral students' academic information seeking behaviors will be analyzed. Moreover, the interventions among doctoral students' Internet self-efficacy, emotions, and their information seeking behaviors will be analyzed and addressed. In the future, this proposed study will be conducted practically. The expected findings will be proposed for doctoral students so that they can based on the provided information to build up their suitable information seeking styles. Furthermore, the expected findings can also be presented for professionals, scholars, or even doctoral students' academic advisors who mainly do research and seek academic information online to have a better understanding of doctoral students' mental and psychical statuses on conducting academic information seeking activity on the Internet. To sum up, the results will not only reflect doctoral students' information seeking behaviors but also provide helpful suggestions for further researches.