New articles: Law students' infolit skills; Gender difference in health information evaluation; Active vs. passive learning

Rowley, J., Johnson, F. and Sbaffi, L. (2017). Gender as an influencer of online health information-seeking and evaluation behavior. Journal of the Association of Information Science and Technology, 68(1), 36–47. doi:10.1002/asi.23597 (Priced publication) Open access preprint at http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/616978/1/TrustGender05052015%20AAM.pdf "through the lens of trust judgments, it demonstrates that gender is a determinant of the information evaluation process. A questionnaire-based survey collected data from adults regarding the factors that influence their judgment of the trustworthiness of online health information. Both men and women identified credibility, recommendation, ease of use, and brand as being of importance in their trust judgments. However, women also take into account style, while men eschew this for familiarity. In addition, men appear to be more concerned with the comprehensiveness and accuracy of the information, the ease with which they can access it, and its familiarity, whereas women demonstrate greater interest in cognition, such as the ease with which they can read and understand the information. These gender differences are consistent with the demographic data, which suggest that: women consult more types of sources than men; men are more likely to be searching with respect to a long-standing health complaint; and, women are more likely than men to use tablets in their health information seeking."

Johnson, H. and Barrett, L. (2017). Your teaching strategy matters: how engagement impacts application in health information literacy instruction. Journal of the Medical Library Association, 105(1), 44–48. doi: 10.5195/jmla.2017.8 Open access at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5234460/ "The purpose of this study was to compare two pedagogical methods, active learning and passive instruction, to determine which is more useful in helping students to achieve the learning outcomes in a one-hour research skills instructional session.... We found that the active learning group scored more favorably in four assessment categories."

Balog, K.P. and Siber, L. (2016). Law Students’ Information Literacy Skills and Attitudes Towards Environmental Protection and Environmental Legislation. Libri,66(3), 201–212. (Priced publication) Issue contents page at https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/libr.2016.66.issue-3/issue-files/libr.2016.66.issue-3.xml
"The aim of the research was to ascertain the [Croatian] law students’ attitudes towards environmental protection and the level of their information literacy skills regarding e-environmental laws and regulations. The survey was conducted in March 2015 on a sample of 110 students. The results show that students are fairly concerned about the protection of the environment but do not feel adequately informed about the issue. Students also believe that Croatia has poor environmental laws and should improve the environmental legislation within the European legal framework."
Photo by Sheila Webber: police tape of Weston Park, January 2017