A research on high school students' capacity of information processing and information searching

The capacity of Information Processing and information searching are the basic ability of the modern citizen in the 21st century. Nowadays, the rapid development of information technology has motivated developed countries to establish schools and organizations that are good at using information. In terms of present enterprises, they also begin to rethink about their working process and how to integrate all their staffs' knowledge and capacity through the assistance of information technology. Only people who have enough the ability of Information Processing and information searching are able to access, evaluate, organize and integrate information effectively with the appropriate methods, while following the exigencies of information ethics. Thereby, they can think critically, conduct self-oriented learning, and increase their own ability to solve their information needs. This research mainly focuses on high school students and does research on the features of students' various background, information environment, the ability of Information Processing and information searching and their relationship. Firstly, this thesis begins with the literature reviews of information literacy related theories and researches. The survey was done using questionnaires with validity and reliability on 1150 high school students. The survey was extracted in the way of stratified random sampling, and was analyzed via descriptive statistics, percentage, mean, standard deviation, chi-square test, t test, and one-way ANOVA. The research produced the following findings that students' backgrounds exhibit significant difference in information environment, the capacity of information processing and information searching. (1) Students whose parents have higher educational degree are significantly different in information processing capacity. (2) Types of public and private schools as well as districts of schools cause significant differences in "information searching capacity". (3) The information environment for the students is well designed and organized. Those students with better information environment are more competent in the capacity of Information Processing and information searching.