Information searching behavior in research writing among the senior high school students in a private maritime university

Abstract

This study was made on the K12 students of a maritime university in Iloilo City and determined to investigate utilization of information resources for research writing of the integrated library services in terms of printed and all other “in-house” resources and the online services in terms of the search engines Google, Yahoo or any other. Student demographics were made to interplay with frequency of use, amount of information found therein, and experiences of ease, effectiveness, convenience and accessibility when searching for informational needs along the initial formulation of a research study like search for topic, title, etc. The one-shot survey design was used to gather data on a selected sample of 239 K12 students. This given population had a male student majority of mostly 17 year-olds enrolled in the pre-baccalaureate maritime academic track, with nearly one third coming from public junior high schools. The printed materials were the most frequently used and Google was the popular search engine. The trend was for the same materials to be easiest, effective, convenient and accessible, with the most quantity of information found from or accessed through them. There were significant relationships of the information resources with research writing content for the easier aspects of research content like search for topic, choice of title, review of related literature along the demographic factors of academic track, class section and sex. The two initial null hypotheses of the study were upheld, but the last one rejected somehow revealing that the information sources were significantly related as to usefulness and positive experience with the aspects of research writing content.