Date of Graduation

Spring 2022

Degree

Master of Science in Psychology

Department

Psychology

Committee Chair

Donald Fischer

Abstract

The internet has become the go-to place for those seeking information. The strategies that people employ when seeking information differ (Tsai, 2005), and critical thinking is related to these differences (Zhang et al., 2015). Although people use different strategies to find information on the internet, there are virtually no formal, easy to use tools for assessing these differences. Wansing and Wood (2020) developed the Internet Search Strategies Assessment (ISSA) for this purpose. A preliminary study revealed that the scale had four factors as hypothesized, but the measure did not correlate as well as expected with other theoretically related scales. This study used a multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) design with undergraduate college students (N=126) to further explore convergent and discriminant validity evidence for ISSA. A combination of implicit and explicit measures were used. Results provided some evidence supporting the construct validity for two of the hypothesized factors. However, the other two factors did not correlate well with any of the measures in the study.

Keywords

internet search, critical-thinking, personality, implicit association test, factor analysis

Subject Categories

Other Psychology

Copyright

© Joseph A. Wansing

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Open Access

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