| Beginning in the 1980s, researchers in a wide array of academic disciplines surveyed undergraduate students to learn if they were overconfident with regard to their knowledge of disciplinary subject matter. Most researchers have found that students tend to overestimate their abilities within a certain body of knowledge. Up until recently, most of these projects were conducted in psychology or economics. Several academic librarians applied these methodologies to undergraduates, curious whether this population demonstrates similar overconfidence in their grasp of academic research. The present study surveyed 34 undergraduates to determine if they were overconfident about their knowledge in key research areas such as citing and referencing, identifying components of scholarly and popular sources, and developing and applying searches in electronic resources. A general knowledge survey was created for comparison purposes. Results showed that students displayed marked overconfidence on both tools, signifying a need for increased library and metacognitive skill instruction. |
