Assessing the Impact of Reference Services Provided to Undergraduate Students

Abstract

This article describes a study assessing the impact of reference services on undergraduate students.The study targeted undergraduates receiving nondirectional reference assistance, yielding sixty-nine survey responses and five follow-up interviews. Three outcomes were examined: (1) Do undergraduate students perceive the reference staff as being friendly and approachable? (2) Do they learn something during the course of the reference interaction? and (3) Do they feel more confident about their ability to find information after the reference interaction than they did before? Our findings suggest that reference services can play a significant role in helping students become confident, independent information seekers. Correlations between variables and a multiple regression model further indicate that friendliness of the reference staff was one of the best predictors of students' confidence in their ability to find information on their own. These outcomes are particularly salient in a college and university environment where building skills for independent information exploration is a primary goal.inding effective and meaningful methods for demonstrating the impact of library services has become increasingly important as almost every library faces reduced budgets that affect services. Systematic evaluation and assessment of reference services can help demonstrate how library services contribute to broader educational goals and provide an opportunity to examine how well locally defined service goals are being met. The current study assesses the impact of nondirectional reference interactions on undergraduate students by focusing on three specific outcomes: perception of 324The Impact of Reference Services Provided to Undergraduate Students 325 staff approachability, awareness of library resources, and confidence in the ability to find information independently. The results contribute to the body of literature on reference services and information literacy, provide a model of assessment, and serve as a benchmark for services to students. The methods used in this study also provide a model for conducting an evaluation of services that avoids some of the pitfalls associated with standard survey techniques. The inclusion of interviews and the administration of surveys immediately following a reference interaction (a variation of the critical incident technique 1 ) offer an opportunity to gain deeper insight into student needs and perceptions. By limiting our scope to just a few, clearly defined outcomes and focusing on a specific reference interaction, we can be confident that the student responses pertain to the situation we are interested in examining. Triangulating between the data gathered via surveys and the rich descriptions from the interview transcripts allows for a multifaceted analysis of the impact of reference on undergraduates. 2 Literature ReviewAlthough there is already a rich and extensive body of literature examining the reference transaction from a variety of perspectives, this particular study focuses...

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