Designing an Instrument for Assessing the Student's Information Literacy at Payam-e-Noor University

The aim of this research was to make a valid and reliable questionnaire for assessing the information literacy of distance learners. The statistical population of it included all students that enrolled in all branches of Payam-e-Noor University of Hamedan province. The total number of those was 28530 people. For sampling of subjects، a cluster sampling method was used. On the basis of this method، 387 subjects were selected based on Kerejsi and Morgan table. To gather data، a research-made questionnaire was used. This questionnaire was made based on the Likert scale (very high، high، moderate، low، and very low). The components of the instrument (questionnaire) included 5 standard competency of ACRL. The questionnaire is composed of 30 items in the form of self-report statements. To make the items suitable، discriminative power method was used، and to validate the items، content، formal and construct validity (convergent validity and factor analysis) were used. Based on the convergent validity، the correlation coefficient between this questionnaire and Asghrnia’s Questionnaire (2009) was 0/77. Also، results of explanatory factor analysis on the items of questionnaire led to extraction of 6 factors with a total cumulative variance explained nearly 66%. For making items reliable، the Cronbach’s alpha was used (a=0/94). Results show that the research-made scale (information literacy questionnaire) is a suitable and a reliable instrument for assessing the information literacy of distance learners. Moreover، other results of the research shows that there are a significant and positive correlation between learners’ level of information literacy skills and their age.