Abstract

This article described the development and testing of a research instrument, known as Information Skills Instrument which was designed to measure youth students’ abilities to search, access and use information from multiple sources in the context of academic works. The instrument was inductively developed from a literature review and tested with a sample of Malaysian school and college students. Principal Component Analysis was used to examine the dimensionality and Cronbach’s alpha was employed to estimate internal consistency of the developed instrument. The final instrument consists of 22 items and reveals five factors; identifying potential information sources; using information from multiple sources; identifying information needs, and identifying types of information sources. Cronbach’s alpha was .871 for the total instrument and .806 to .463 for subscales. The study showed that Principal Component Analysis could assist the development and refinement process of final information skills instrument which requires further testing with other youth students.

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