A cross-cultural evaluation of the psychometric properties of information seeking anxiety scale in Pakistani environment

This study investigated the psychometric properties of Information Seeking Anxiety Scale (ISAS) of postgraduate students in a Pakistani university. A 47-item ISAS was administered to 297 students, selected through stratified convenient sampling procedure, by visiting each department at the universit...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Malaysian journal of library & information science 2017-01, Vol.22 (3), p.35-51
Main Authors: Naveed, Muhammad Asif, Ameen, Kanwal
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anxiety
Information seeking behavior
Principal components analysis
Quantitative psychology
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This study investigated the psychometric properties of Information Seeking Anxiety Scale (ISAS) of postgraduate students in a Pakistani university. A 47-item ISAS was administered to 297 students, selected through stratified convenient sampling procedure, by visiting each department at the university. An eighty-five percent response rate was achieved through usable returned questionnaires. The principal component analysis (PCA) using varimax rotation yielded six-factor solution to the Information Seeking Anxiety Scale (ISAS), namely, (1) Resource Anxiety; (2) ICT Anxiety; (3) Library Anxiety; (4) Search Anxiety; (5) Mechanical Anxiety; and, (6) Thematic Anxiety. This six factors corresponded to those of Erfanmanesh, Abrizah, and Karim (2012) but differed somewhat with regard to the statements loaded on each factor. Moreover, these six-factors combined together accounted for 52.7 percent of the total variance explained. Seven item were dropped as a result of reliability analysis resulting 40-item instrument. Also, the values of Cronbach’s internal reliability coefficient alpha for overall ISAS and its sub-scales were found satisfactory as recommended by Nunnally and Bernstein (1994). These results demonstrated the psychometric soundness and stability of ISAS when tested with Pakistani postgraduate students recruited from a research-intensive university. More psychometric studies are required before drawing any sound conclusions regarding adequacy of ISAS in assessing information seeking anxiety in Pakistani information users.
ISSN:1394-6234
DOI:10.22452/mjlis.vol22no3.3