Analysis Of Relevant Factors Affecting The Selection Of Postgraduates’ Information Sources

Postgraduate education as an important part of higher education, carries an important responsibility of the research studies and national personnel training. Training of graduate students also represents the comprehensive strength of a country. Study of postgraduate information behavior can help understanding the students’ habits and information literacy, and providing guidance of training postgraduate’ information ability. This article attempts to get influence factors driving form the research on the information search behavior of postgraduates.(1) The concept of information search behavior, the classical models of information behavior and the influence factors of information search behavior were introduced. Secondly, the propose, the evolution and the application of Leckie’s model were reviewed. And then, tried to use the Leckie’s model as the theoretical frame to study the postgraduates’ information search behavior.(2) According to the characteristics of postgraduates, and adding teaching and learning into Leckie’s model, postgraduates’ information search behavior model was proposed. According to the proposed model, from the perspective of postgraduates’ information source selection, designed the "questionnaire of postgraduates’ information search behavior", and then the questionnaires were distributed. At last,185 valid answers were recovered. Then according to the recovered data, descriptive analysis and analysis of variance were carryed out.(3) This study showed that most students were more familiar with Word, Excel and Powerpoint office software, and relatively less understanding of the database; for the highest utilization rate search engine, accounting for 91.35%, while the use of less traditional books, only 52.97%; 81.08% of people prefer to use the electronic version of the information resource, while only 18.92 percent of the people would like a printed version of resource; about interpersonal resources, students are more willing to ask help from friends or classmates.(4) In the results of ANOVA, except the selection of electronic journals and university library website are affected by the students of different grades, the selection of the on-line database and printed books are affected by different major students and the selection of university library website is affected by the searching purpose, the remaining items have no affect on the selection of information resources. In the analysis of the related factors of information sources found that the using frequencies of search engines, electronic journals and online databases have significant relevance with the application ability of Word, Excel and PowerPoint, the using frequencies of electronic journals and online databases have significant relevance with the application ability of database, and the using frequency of each information source and English ability are not relevant.