Abstract:
The study examined relationship between internet self-efficacy and search engine use by investigating the usage frequency of search engines, the specific type of search engines most frequently used among various types available on the internet like Google, Yahoo and Wikipedia and demographic and statistical pattern of their usage. The target population for this study was undergraduates in three faculties of the University of Ibadan, to include Arts, Education and Social Sciences. The multi-stage sampling technique was used for the study. A sampling fraction of 6% was used to select sample size for each of the selected faculties which gave 239.The data collection instrument used was questionnaire and collated data was analysed using frequency counts and correlation for the analysis of the hypothesis. Findings revealed that majority of the respondents 218 (90%) indicated that Google was the search engine very readily available to them. 182 (75.8%) strongly agreed that they used search engines for research purposes. Findings further revealed that the search engine that was used daily by majority of the respondents 160 (66.7%) is Google. While a significant number 97 (40.4%) acknowledged that they used Yahoo weekly, while Wikipedia was used occasionally as noted by 70 (29.2%).The overall mean for internet self-efficacy as indicated by the responses of the undergraduates is 24.96, which means that the level of internet self-efficacy of the respondents is high. In the study, there was a significant positive relationship between internet self-efficacy and use of search engines by the respondents (r= .213**;df = 239; p < 0.01). This implies that the higher the level of internet self-efficacy, the more the undergraduates will use the search engines for their various academic activities. If undergraduates possess high internet self-efficacy, they would have the required skills, knowledge and abilities to identify and use different search engines to meet their information needs and vice versa. Therefore, it is very important for undergraduate students to build their internet self-efficacy if they want to use the search engines effectively.
