Reliability and validity of self-efficacy scales assessing students’ information literacy skills. A systematic review

Published date02 October 2017
Date02 October 2017
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/EL-03-2016-0056
Pages1035-1051
AuthorKhalid Mahmood
Subject MatterInformation & knowledge management,Information & communications technology,Internet
Reliability and validity of
self-ecacy scales assessing
studentsinformation literacy skills
A systematic review
Khalid Mahmood
Department of Information Management, University of the Punjab,
Lahore, Pakistan
Abstract
Purpose This paper systematically reviewsthe evidence of reliability and validity of scales available in
studies that reported surveys of students to assess their perceived self-efcacy of information literacy (IL)
skills.
Design/methodology/approach Search in two subject and two general databases and scanning of
titles, abstractsand full texts of documents have been carriedout in this paper.
Findings In total, 45 studies met the eligibility criteria. A large number of studies did not report any
psychometric characteristics of data collection instruments they used. The selected studies provided
information on 22 scales.The instruments were heterogeneous in number of itemsand type of scale options.
The most used reliability measure wasinternal consistency (with high values of Cronbachs alpha), and the
most used validitywas face/content validity by experts.
Practical implications The culture of using good-quality scales needs to be promoted by IL
practitioners,authors and journal editors.
Originality/value This paper is the rst reviewof itskind, which is useful for IL stakeholders.
Keywords Information literacy, Students, Self-efcacy scales
Paper type Literature review
Introduction
With the enormous growth in scientic literature, information literacy (IL) is
considered imperative for academic achievement and life-long learning. The
assessment of IL instruction, learning and programming has become a primary area of
concern for librarians, faculty and administrators. There is a large body of literature
that describes methods of IL assessment. Commonly used methods include multiple
choice questionnaire, quiz, test, portfolio, observation and analysis of bibliographies
and essays. Self-assessment has also been a popular subjective method of assessing IL
skills (Walsh, 2009). Many case studies on self-assessment have been reported in the
literature of IL, but very little is known about the reliability and validity of scales used
in this method.
The objective of the current study is to systematicallycollect and review the evidence of
development and use of self-efcacy scales reported in the literature of studentsIL skills.
The author could not nd any study which reviewed the psychometric characteristics of
such scales. This study specicallyexamines the evidence of reliability and validity of these
scales. The following questionswere addressed:
Students
information
literacy skills
1035
Received5 March 2016
Revised28 December 2016
Accepted6 February 2017
TheElectronic Library
Vol.35 No. 5, 2017
pp. 1035-1051
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0264-0473
DOI 10.1108/EL-03-2016-0056
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0264-0473.htm
Q1. How many studies used self-assessment or self-efcacy scales to survey students
perceived IL skills?
Q2. Which studies reportedinformation on reliability and validity of scales they used?
Q3. What kind of reliabilityand validity measures were reported by the studies?
Literature review
Bandura (1977,1986) introducedthe self-efcacy theory to the literature of psychology. Self-
efcacy is a belief in ones ability to successfully perform a particular behaviour or task.
Bandura (1997,p.3)denes this construct as beliefs in ones capabilities to organize and
execute the course of action required to producegiven accomplishments.Kurbanoğlu et al.
(2006, p. 731) furtherrened this denition, as follows:
Success is not only based on the possession of necessary skills, it also requires the condence to
use these skills eectively. In other words, learning certain skills is not enough; individuals
should also develop condence in the skills that they are learning. Self-ecacy beliefs determine
how long individuals will persevere and how resilient they will be in the face of diculties, and
how much eort they will expend on an activity.
The strength of self-efcacy is measuredby degrees of certainty that one can perform given
tasks (Zimmerman, 1995). Therefore, self-efcacy needs to be measured directly by the use
of self-assessmentscales.
The literature on IL assessment has reported many self-rating inventories and self-efcacy
scales used in educational settings. Use of this approach for IL has also been much debated as it
hasitsownprosandcons.Duetothepositiveeffectsofself-efcacy on self-regulation, self-
assessment has a special diagnostic value. The subjective assessment can improve the
subsequent performance (Rosman et al., 2015). On the other hand, experts have challenged the
accuracy of self-rating of studentsIL skills. Lower ability students tend to overestimate their
abilities because they lack experience in the respective domain, and thus do not have an empirical
basis for their judgments(Rosman et al., 2015,p.742).Inspiteofthisdebate,theapproachof
assessing perceived IL self-efcacyhasbeencontinuouslyusedandreportedintheliterature.
The goals of publishing case studies of IL assessmentin the professional literature are to
share experiences and invite others to benet from them in their endeavours. Researchers
usually claim that their instruments are the best tools for data collection and recommend
them for the use of others. Theyexpress the quality of their measurement scales in terms of
their reliability and validity:
Reliability is the consistency that a measurement instrument assesses a given construct; validity
is the degree of relationship, or the overlap, between a measurement instrument and the construct
it is intended to assess (Crano et al., 2014, p. 45).
In general, it is necessary to have exact knowledge of the psychometric characteristics of
assessment instruments being used, because the outcome of instruments showing insucient
validity or reliability cannot be correctly interpreted (Speyer et al., 2011, p. e573).
Research method
This review was performed following the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews
and meta-analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. These guidelines allow systematic reviewers to
plan and conduct carefully and explicitly document what is planned, enabling others to
replicate reviewmethods and to judge the validity of methods used (Shamseer et al., 2015).
EL
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