Quantitative Assessment of Students' Library Skills and Attitudes

8. Future Research

In the future, we probably will evaluate group instruction (BI) and individual instruction (RPCs) independently. Our quantitative survey instrument is more suited for BI evaluation than RPC evaluation. A single instrument cannot encompass both types of library instruction well.
We may sacrifice simplicity in research design in hopes of obtaining more meaningful results:

Future studies will not have the admittedly artificial one-week period between pre-test and post-test. We distributed post-tests one week after the instruction session so that factors besides library instruction would not skew our results. In the future, we will administer pre-tests before instruction and post-tests at some point after the instruction is likely to have been used (ie., after the relevant assignment is due).
Future studies will have a major qualitative component. Our instrument contained one open-ended question at the end, but few students responded to it. Future instruments should try to test knowledge via qualitative responses.

Future studies should continue to contain both knowledge and affective measures. Students' attitudes about the library are just as important as their ability to use it effectively.

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