The Information School at the University of Washington is conducting a multi-year study to find out how college and university students do research— as they put it, “how early adults conceptualize and operationalize research activities for course work and ‘everyday use’ and especially how they resolve issues of credibility, authority, relevance, and currency in the digital age.”
Check out Project Information Literacy‘s Web site for a list of publications, videos and progress reports.
Their exploratory research with students at Saint Mary’s College of California found “the majority of students (87%) did not go to Google’s search engine first when conducting research as many previous studies have suggested.”