Article
The Development and Use of a Research Self-efficacy Scale to Assess the Effectiveness of a Research Training Program for Academic Librarians
Library and Information Research
(2017)
Abstract
Research self-efficacy – or research confidence – has been shown to be a predictor of research productivity. There is also some evidence that it is a mediating factor between the research training environment and research productivity. To explore the connection between research training and research self-efficacy, the authors developed, validated, and later expanded a scale to measure research self-efficacy among academic librarians. They used the expanded 38-item scale to measure the research self-efficacy of participants from a three-year research training workshop for academic librarians, comparing results before and after the workshop. Participants experienced significant increases in research self-efficacy across all 38-questions, within the annual cohorts and across all three years. The question-level results were used to make changes to the summer workshops in Years 2 and 3, in order to improve the effectiveness of the summer workshop to increase research self-efficacy. This study confirms that a measurement of research self-efficacy can be a useful tool in assessing the effectiveness of research training and improving that training.
Keywords
- librarian research,
- research self-efficacy,
- practitioner research,
- library and information science
Disciplines
Publication Date
2017
Citation Information
Kristine R. Brancolini and Marie R. Kennedy. "The Development and Use of a Research Self-efficacy Scale to Assess the Effectiveness of a Research Training Program for Academic Librarians" Library and Information Research Vol. 41 Iss. 124 (2017) p. 44 - 84 ISSN: 1756-1086 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/kristine_brancolini/22/
Creative Commons license
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC_BY-NC-ND International License.