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Undergrads’ research habits, motivators and attitudes:
What studies tell us
By Brant Emery, ScienceDirect Marketing Manager, Elsevier, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

At Elsevier, we’ve recently conducted studies investigating undergraduates’ information-seeking behavior and we've spoken with our development partners to get their opinion on this subject. As Lina Wang, Nanyang Technological University subject librarian for computer sciences and Elsevier development partner, said, “I have already seen many students using tools like these [Web 2.0 applications] and we must be ready to understand how changing information use will affect libraries in the future.”

Today’s undergrads may exhibit a different persona than preceding generations yet are displaying rather traditional information-seeking behavior.

Research commissioned by Elsevier to look into the research habits of students began with a Scopus-based usability study in 2005. Subsequently, a more in-depth investigation into students’ habits and influencers took place in 2006, when we conducted phone and onsite interviews with undergrads in Germany, the Netherlands, the UK and the USA. Questions posed were: How do students find information? What are their motivators? How do they define high-quality resources? How do they use the university library?

The 2006 study revealed key findings

1: Today’s undergrads are achievement-oriented
To understand how students find information, we first checked the assumption that undergrads look on their own initiative for degree-related information. Of students interviewed, only 40% proactively conducted course-related research but 100% engaged in online study daily or a few times per week. The 2005 Scopus study reinforced this finding and reported, “The mean frequency was 4 or 5 times per week and the mean duration was 1.5 hours per search session, implying about 6.7 hours per week spent searching [for course-related information].” In both studies, answers varied according to course requirements and discipline.

2: Today’s undergrads are selective and like to control their time
Next we asked students where they started looking, which resources they used and how they viewed these sources. Unsurprisingly, 100% of students interviewed in 2006 used Google and listed it in their top three starting points. Recent research (CIBER, 2008) commissioned by the British Library and JISC states that search engines have become the primary brand Millennials associate with the Internet and are ubiquitously used by this generation. But all students interviewed by Elsevier also used their university library websites or catalogs, and they didn’t feel overly positive towards Google. Though interviewees said university websites were harder to use and unintuitive, they noted Google generated too many results and required more trawling time.

3: Today’s undergrads are practical
When asked what constitutes a good source of information, students interviewed in 2006 gave the following answers, listed by popularity:
      1. Recommended by friends
      2. Its reputation
      3. Prior personal experience
      4. Ease of use
      5. Provides links to other reliable sources

4: Today’s undergrads spend time in libraries
Regarding their use of the university library, 100% of 2006 interviewees reported visiting the library and 80% reported doing so more than once a week. The majority reported consulting librarians but “only to retrieve books or for interlibrary loans” and did not consider them a source of recommendations for information sources. However, one admitted he’d recently consulted a librarian and had been directed to a journal that solved his problem.

5: Today's undergrads are social but prefer to do research at home
Of students interviewed in 2006, 60% preferred to do research from home. When asked to rank their reasons for being on campus, after “to attend a seminar or lecture and studying for exams,” the second and third most popular reasons given were socializing with friends and playing sports.

Different but the same?

Another key finding emerged when we asked if students had received library orientation. Though 90% had participated in library trainings, all reported receiving the training as freshmen and only 20% said it was mandatory. Asked if they had requested further training from librarians, respondents said no. Hence it may be inferred that learning to use the library and its resources has for most students been self-taught or gained from classmates. When we consulted Elsevier development partners about this finding, many stated that while they can’t on a standard basis offer library refresher courses to higher-level students, they can do so on request.

In conclusion, our research illustrated that today’s undergrads may exhibit a different persona than preceding generations yet are displaying rather traditional information-seeking behavior. Just as social applications like Facebook don’t make people genuinely more social, the availability of tools such as Google doesn't make today’s undergrads more adept researchers or equip them to skip the very real and challenging work required to earn a degree.