Browsing by Author "Chandratilake, M. N."

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Development and validation of a tool to predict information seeking behavior of medical undergraduates, Sri Lanka.
(Proceedings of 11th International Conference of University Librarians Association of Sri Lanka- 2021, 2021-09-22) Marasinghe, M. P. L. R.; Chandratilake, M. N.; Kasturiratne, K. T. A. A.
Information seeking behaviour is a set of actions expressing information needs, searching, evaluating, selecting, and utilization of information. The study aimed to develop and validate a tool to measure the information seeking behaviour of medical undergraduates in Sri Lanka. Final and penultimate year students in medical faculties in universities of Kelaniya, Peradeniya and Colombo, and Eastern University in Sri Lanka were invited for the study. The elements of information seeking behaviour were defined by thematically analyzing the content of focus group nine discussions with medical undergraduates. The scale was developed based on the Integrated Behavioural Model. The preliminary scale with 60 items was developed and pretested. The responses of a field test with the participation of 436 medical undergraduates were subjected to confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and psychometric analysis. The tool was refined to include 40 items and the revised version was administered to 645 of medical undergraduates. The sub-components of the 40-item tool partially matched with the theoretical framework and the reliabilities of overall and sub components demonstrated high to moderate reliabilities. The tool can be used to evaluate the information seeking behaviour of medical undergraduates effectively
Information seeking behavior of medical undergraduates, Sri Lanka. Annual scientific meeting,
(Association for the study of medical education (ASME, 2019), 2019-07) Marasinghe, M. P. L. R.; Chandratilake, M. N.; Kasturiratne, K. T. A. A.
The themes identified varied from conceptualization of information seeking behaviours to needs, strategies, barriers and facilitators. Students use limited sources of information in classroom-based learning and they confine mainly to material provided by teachers, i.e. teacher-directed behaviour (“Lecturers guide us and give reference materials to refer. We tend to seek information based on their recommendations.”). This was primarily driven by exam-orientation and the belief of learning (“We seek information to target our exams and we do not go beyond that.”). They seek information external sources, e.g. web, while they learn in clinical environment, i.e. self-directed behaviour, as they face with more uncertainty in learning. Web sources used ranged from informal sources (“Most instances I use Wikipedia for convenience sake.”) to standard sources (“We find information from Medscape, otherwise we refer Radiopaedia or Up To Date.”). Although the participants were millennials some tend to prefer printed material which gives them a higher sense of ‘confidence’ (“Personally I prefer to have printed materials and use textbooks because I can understand better from textbooks.”). The role of a traditional library seems to be weaning-off with smart phones and tablets gaining popularity (“We normally use mobile phones and tablets for seeking information, not the library.”)