Cultural Intelligence as a Correlate of Academic Performance among the students of Masters in Library and Information Science

A library is a perfect multi-cultural setting, where people from all ethnic backgrounds come together to access information. In this context, it becomes very vital for future library professionals to consider cultural skills as a tool kit to identify and manage varied cultural characteristics. Academic performance of Library science students might be an effective indicator of their being a potential professional in library settings in the future. So the objective of the paper was to investigate whether academic performance of library students was significantly predicted by Cultural Intelligence and certain demographic variables of students studying in the Department of Library Science and Information from the three prominent universities of Assam. For the study, all the 66 students from the three universities were selected, out of which 61 students responded to the survey. Data was collected using Cultural Quotient Scale, developed by Soon Ang and Van Dyne. The results of regression analysis were found to be statistically significant in case of both Gauhati and Dibrugarh universities. The motivational and behavioral components of cultural intelligence, along with demographic characteristics like gender and work experience emerged as strong predictors of academic performance among the students of Gauhati University. The cognitive, metacognitive and behavioral components of cultural intelligence, along with demographic characteristics like possession of professional qualification and place of residence were found to be strong predictors of academic performance among the students of Dibrugarh University