information-seeking behavior in the Smartphones environment: the case study of PhD students of Shahid Chamran University of Ahwaz

Today, given the growing advances in technology, smartphones have become one of the means of accessing information. The purpose of this study is to investigate the information-seeking behavior in the mobile environment by analyzing PhD student smartphone users’ behaviour at Shahid Chamran University of Ahwaz. The study is descriptive and is based on a survey. A researcher-constructed questionnaire is used to collect the data. The statistical population of this research is 285 PhD students at Shahid Chamran University of Ahwaz enrolled in 2016. The findings suggest that smartphones are used predominantly for connecting to social media, chat, voice calls and Internet access. After Laptops, smartphones are the most widely used tools for accessing the news, seeking information for academic research and reading e-books and articles. The results also show that some of the most important advantages of smartphones are continual information exchange, immediate access to information from anywhere, multi-tasking option and quick searching for information.