Information Literacy of Polish Ph.D. Students: The Learning Outcomes Approach

Students are arguably one of the most-researched populations, including in the context of information literacy (IL). Although Ph.D. students’ IL is not studied as frequently, it’s crucial for the efficiency and validity of their research and future career prospects. We will discuss the development of an ILDoc questionnaire dedicated to researching IL of Ph.D. students. The first step was to refer to well-known and verified tools such as ILSES, IL-HUMASS, PKIM, and ALFINVES. The other step was to include the learning outcomes approach in the questionnaire. The CAWI questionnaire was used between September 2022 and January 2023 among Ph.D. students from five Polish universities. 294 responses were collected. Using EFA and CFA, we identified 14 core variables that reflect four theoretically consistent factors. Based on the findings, we propose that these identified latent factors could form the basis for determining the variables in the SEM analysis.