How do gender, Internet activity and learning beliefs predict sixth-grade students’ self-efficacy beliefs in and attitudes towards online inquiry?
Abstract
Today’s students search, evaluate and actively use Web information in their school assignments, that is, they conduct an online inquiry. This current survey study addresses sixth-grade students’ self-efficacy beliefs in and attitudes towards online inquiry, and to what extent free-time and school-related Internet activity, gender and learning beliefs explain these. The questionnaire was administered in 10 schools to 340 sixth-graders in Finland. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses revealed three elements of self-efficacy beliefs: self-efficacy in Web searching, the evaluation of sources and synthesising information. Furthermore, attitudes towards online inquiry loaded into two factors: a positive and a negative attitude towards online inquiry. A structural equation model was used to analyse the effects of the explanatory variables on the factors. The results of this work suggest that gender and free-time Internet use predict most sixth-graders’ self-efficacy beliefs in and attitudes towards online inquiry.
Main Authors
Format
Articles
Research article
Published
2023
Series
Subjects
Publication in research information system
Publisher
SAGE Publications
The permanent address of the publication
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:jyu-202109234954Käytä tätä linkitykseen.
Review status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0165-5515
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1177/01655515211043708
Language
English
Published in
Journal of Information Science
Citation
- Sormunen, E., Erdmann, N., Otieno, S. C., Mikkilä-Erdmann, M., Laakkonen, E., Mikkonen, T., Hossain, M. A., González-Ibáñez, R., Quintanilla-Gatica, M., Leppänen, P. H., & Vauras, M. (2023). How do gender, Internet activity and learning beliefs predict sixth-grade students’ self-efficacy beliefs in and attitudes towards online inquiry?. Journal of Information Science, 49(5), 1246-1261. https://doi.org/10.1177/01655515211043708
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Additional information about funding
The study was part of the Enhancing learning and teaching for future competences of online inquiry in multiple domains (iFuCo) proj-ect funded by the Academy of Finland (grant’s no. 294186), and the National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research(CONICYT) in Chile (grant AKA/EDU-03)
Copyright© The Author(s) 2021