Students' cognition and information searching while preparing a research proposal

The paper focuses on analysing students' information needs in terms of conceptual understanding of the topic they propose to study and its consequences for the search process and outcome. The research subjects were 22 undergraduates of psychology attending a seminar for preparing a research proposal for a small empirical study. They were asked to perform a search in the PsychINFO database for their task at the beginning and end of the seminar. A pre- and post search interview was conducted in both sessions. The students were asked to think aloud in the sessions. This was recorded as were the transaction logs. The results show that during the preparation of research proposals different features of the students' conceptual structure were connected to the search success, and that process variables did not commonly intermediate between the search outcome and conceptual structure.