The Relationship between Self-efficacy Beliefs and User's Skills for Searching in Persian and English Databases

Finding the relationship between user's self-efficacy beliefs and skills for searching in databases. Methodology/Approach: This is a survey using correlation. The population consists of all post-graduate students in Humanities entered Bu-Ali Sina University in 2013. Using stratified random sampling, 49 male and 55 female were selected. To gather data General Self-efficacy Scale (GSE-10) is used along with a self-designed questionnaire for measuring search skills. Data analyzed using Pearson correlation and Student's t-test. There is a direct and significant correlation between user's search skills and their self-efficacy beliefs. Search skills of post-graduate students of humanities in Bu-Ali Sina University are evaluated to be average and their self-efficacy beliefs above the average. The results support the impact of psychological factors such as self-efficacy beliefs on user's interaction with information and communication technology.