Undergraduate information behaviors in thesis writing: A study using the Information Search Process model

Abstract

The study investigates whether information-seeking behavior models and theories obtained in previous research are applicable to more complex tasks. It also aims to gather students’ opinions on the importance and helpfulness of various traditional and online information sources in their thesis-writing process. This study would help to develop a better understanding of the roles and impacts of these information sources in the current networked academic infrastructure. Inspired by the Information Search Process model, we divided the process into six stages and conducted three separate surveys that covered students’ feelings, thoughts and actions, as well as other important factors that might affect their behaviors in each of the stages. Our study shows that both the feelings and thoughts of students changed during the different stages of the process, and that they were generally consistent with the descriptions in the Information Search Process model. The study indicates that it is beneficial to use the Information Search Process model as the starting point for studying the student thesis-writing processes. As the outcome of the study, we ultimately proposed a multi-stage model for Chinese undergraduate students’ thesis-writing process.