Information Seeking Behavior of School Students in Delhi: A Comparative Study

Purpose: The study attempts to understand information seeking behaviour of school students of Delhi. It includes sources for initiation resources, preferences of printed and electronic resources, preferred language, method used to search information resources, purpose of using internet, time spent on e- search and electronic devices used for reading. Method: The data for the study was collected from nine schools consisting of three government schools and six private schools. Stratified random sampling method was used to select the sample. The SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Science-version24) was used to transform and analyze the data with applied statistical techniques such as Mann-Whitney U Test and Chi-Square test for proportions and content analysis. Findings: Result of the analysis revealed that printed information material is more preferred than electronic information material for both government and private school students. The students use electronic information resources more for recreational purposes than for academic ones, however significant difference in use of E resources was observed between government and private school students. Government school students as well as private school students were found to prefer and use mobile phones for searching information over other electronic gadgets such as laptops, tablets, etc. however use of Laptops, Kindle and Tablets was found to be significantly higher among private school students than government school students. Conclusion: Government school students preferred Hindi as language for information resources whereas Private school students preferred English information sources. It was found from the study that the information seeking behavior of Government and Private school students varied significantly.