The Relationship between Critical Thinking and Information Literacy in Mashhad University of Medical Sciences Residents in 2020

Abstract

Background: Information literacy, as a critical skill, is not limited to library-bibliographic skills but it includes analytic-critical thinking skills. The importance of information literacy skills and critical thinking skills in finding information, evaluation, etc. of finned resources is not well known. So this study was designed to determine the critical thinking status and its relationship with information literacy among Mashhad University of Medical Sciences (MUMS) residents.Method: The least sample size determined by the Cochrane formula was 195. Two instruments were used in this study: the thinking skills questionnaire, and the information literacy questionnaire. The questioner went to different wards, explained the study to residents, got the informed consent, took their questionnaires, and finally got back the filled questionnaires. The data was analyse by SPSS ver11.5.Results: 195 clinical residents involved in this study, 66.6% of which were female and 53.3% were married. About 62.05% had a moderate level of information literacy. The best performance regarding the critical thinking domains was analysis and the poorest was evaluation. Information literacy did not have a relationship with general characteristics (p-value>0.05). But being male (p<0.002 , p<0.001)and unmarried (p<0.001 , p<0.001)had positive effects on critical thinking especially in regards to interference and deduction respectively. Conclusion: Residents did not have an acceptable level and were far from the desired level; neither in information literacy nor critical thinking. This study showed a significant correlation between critical thinking and information literacy.

Keywords

• information literacy
• critical thinking
• specialist residents