Relationship between Critical Thinking and Information Literacy of Medical Sciences Students

Information literacy is one of the most basic needs of life in the information society. On the other hand، one of the factors that helps people to access the information is critical thinking skill that its development is considered as the one of the most important goals of medical education in the technology era. Current study aimed to investigate the relationship between critical thinking and information literacy among medical students. In this descriptive-analytic study، 150 students who were studying in 2012-13 in Shiraz University of Medical Sciences were selected by random cluster sampling. For data collection، the California critical thinking questionnaire «B Form» and the information literacy researcher-made questionnaire were used. Reliability of critical thinking questionnaire was assessed 0. 69 using Kuder-Richardson and reliability of information literacy questionnaire was assessed 0. 79 using Cronbach''s alpha. To assess the validity of both questionnaires face validity was used using expert consensus. Obtained data were analyzed using SPSS 19 software by Pearson correlation test. There was a significant correlation between critical thinking and information literacy Scores. Also there was a direct and significant correlation between the sub-components of the evaluation، inference، analysis، deductive and inductive reasoning with information literacy. There is a direct relation between critical thinking skill and its sub-components with information literacy. Therefore، promotion of information literacy skill in medical sciences students depends on the process of critical thinking.