Last week I attended the 2016 conference of Qualitative and Quantitative
Methods in Libraries, and presented a paper I co-authored with two wonderful
colleagues from Loyola Marymount University (LMU), Marie and Kris. In this presentation, we talked about the
mapping between librarians’ research confidence and the curriculum of the Institute of Research Design for Librarianship (IRDL), a
federally funded program that provides research methods training for
librarians. For each topic covered in the training program (e.g. research
question development, research design, data collection, data analysis, research
dissemination), librarians’ confidence was measured before and after the
program, and increase was detected across the board. This was consistent with the
preliminary findings of another study we are conducting. In that study, we seek
to understand the long term impact of IRDL by asking the participants to
describe three incidents where they strongly felt the benefits of IRDL in their
work or research. So far we have seen quite a number of narratives about how
they felt more confident when working with faculty, talking to people at
conferences and interpreting the published literature.
According to Bandura, mastery experiences build confidence through
success and provide an individual with the ability to persevere in the face of
obstacles, which is especially important in performing difficult tasks, such as
conducting research in the traditionally practical library profession (lack of
confidence is often cited as a barrier to librarians’ research engagement). I’m
glad to see that IRDL has been able to improve librarian’s research confidence
and help them become more confident and competent practitioner researchers. The
third cohort of IRDL will gather in LMU for their training in less than a week,
and I look forward to meeting them!
Formalized Curiosity 