Investigating Information Seeking Anxiety among Postgraduate Students:A Case Study of Iranian Students in Malaysia

The current study aims to investigate the prevalence of information seekinganxiety among a group of Iranian postgraduate students at a research intensiveuniversity in Malaysia. Applying a stratified random sampling method, a sample comprised of 375students was drawn from a population of 850 students. The study subjects wererequired to fill up the Information Seeking Anxiety Scale (ISAS). The results of the study revealed that while 96.5% of the students reported tohave experienced different levels of anxiety, the overall level was not severe.Additionally, based on the mean score for various sub-scales of the InformationSeeking Anxiety Scale (ISAS), “barriers associated with information resources” wasfound to be the most important source of information seeking anxiety amongpostgraduate students. Also, the results of the study revealed that postgraduatestudents reported to have experienced the lowest level of information seekinganxiety related to “barriers associated with computer and the Internet” sub-scale.