ASSESSING STUDENTS LIBRARY SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE - THE LIBRARY RESEARCH STRATEGIES QUESTIONNAIRE

3 studies were conducted to develop a questionnaire on strategies of l ibrary research which showed demonstrable psychometric qualities such as validity and reliability, to aid in assessing the effectiveness of bibliographic instruction of psychology students. In Study 1, 31 under graduate students were interviewed about their use of the library and the strategies they use when confronted with a paper-writing assignmen t. In Study 2, the qualitative responses from Study 1 were used to dev elop a pool of multiple-choice items for testing, to examine whether a psychometrically valid and reliable instrument could be created. 64 s tudents were tested. Using the results from Study 2, Study 3 refined t he original questionnaire; reliability measures and factor analysis ba sed on responses of 246 students were used to confirm 4 factors compos ing the Library Research Strategies Questionnaire, namely, person-spec ific skills, library-specific skills, paper-specific skills, and refer ence-specific skills.