A STUDY ON THE EFFECTS OF STUDENTS INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SKILLS ON SCHOLARLY INFORMATION MANAGEMENT AMONG POST GRADUATE STUDENTS IN KIAMBU COUNTY, KENYA

With the rapid growth of information, the ability of students to be information literate has become critically important. However students information retrieval skills required for scholarly information management are still wanting as most papers written by postgraduate learners contain irrelevant information that are not related to their study topics. This study investigated the effects of students’ information retrieval skills on scholarly information management among post graduate students in Kiambu County Kenya. The study adopted information management theory as it showed that information literacy practices influence scholarly information management. A mixed methodology with concurrent triangulation design was used to conduct the research as it allowed the researcher to collect and analyse qualitative and quantitative data concurrently. Generalization was made based on findings generated from the collected data. The study had a target of 2451 which included 40 librarians, 40 supervisors, and 249 postgraduate students. The study participants were selected through purposive and simple random procedures. The sample population included 245 postgraduate students from 4 selected Universities and 4 library staff from each of the selected universities. Data was collected using self-administered questionnaires for students and interview schedule for librarians. Pilot testing ensured certainty of instruments, the retest method helped estimate reliability (r=0.70) to ensure that data gathered were accurate and reliable and the instruments were validated by seeking constant guidance of the supervisor. To achieve all the study objectives, both qualitative and quantitative data were gathered and analyzed to generate descriptive, inferential as well as qualitatively. Quantitative data collected was analyzed using SPSS version 21. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used in analyzing quantitative data while thematic analysis was used to analyze qualitative data. The analyzed quantitative data were presented using Tables. The study findings indicated that postgraduate students’ information retrieval skills normally had positive effects on the students’ scholarly information management. The results further revealed that there exists a statistical significant relationship between the independent variables and the dependent variable investigated. Article visualizations