What's skill got to do with it?: Information literacy skills and self‐views of ability among first‐year college students

TLDR

Many first‑year college students enter with below‑proficient information‑literacy skills and tend to overestimate their abilities. The study collected demographic data, administered an objective information‑literacy test, and asked participants to self‑estimate their skills. Results confirm that students with below‑proficient IL skills overestimate their abilities, and that even students who score proficient can exhibit similar miscalibration.

Abstract

Abstract This study replicates a previous study based on work in psychology, which demonstrates that students who score as below proficient in information literacy (IL) skills have a miscalibrated self‐view of their ability. Simply stated, these students tend to believe that they have above‐average IL skills, when, in fact, an objective test of their ability indicates that they are below‐proficient in terms of their actual skills. This investigation was part of an Institute of Museum and Library Services‐funded project and includes demographic data about participants, their scores on an objective test of their information literacy skills, and self‐estimates of their ability. Findings support previous research that indicates many students come to college without proficient IL skills, that students with below‐proficient IL skills have inflated views of their ability, and that this miscalibration can also be expressed by students who test as proficient. Implications for research and practice are discussed.