Medical Students’ Information Literacy Self-efficacy: Longitudinal Study-Protocol Covering a Whole Medical Curriculum

Abstract

Information literacy (IL) and IL self-efficacy (SE) have already been studied in diverse ways by several research groups. However, to our knowledge, no medical curriculum-based studies are available on ILSE. This paper describes the study protocol of the longitudinal study of the evolution in ILSE among individual students as well as cohorts of students throughout (parts of) a complete medical curriculum. A thorough literature study of ILSE within a medical context formed the basis of this research. To evaluate medical-oriented ILSE, a standardized existing ILSE-scale enriched with ten specific medical items was completed, between 2011 and 2016, by all medical students at Ghent University (Belgium), ending with a surplus qualitative study. Data will be analysed statistically. This study will allow to look for cross-sectional as well as longitudinal results. The qualitative study at the end of the research will be performed to clarify some quantitative results.