Article title: Relationship Between Affective Tendency, Sex and Library Anxiety Among Undergraduate Students

Authors: Osaretin Agbonavbare[1], Elizerbeth Egbochuku[2], Ismaila Adeleke[3]

Affiliations: University of Benin, Nigeria[1]

Orcid ids: 0000-0001-7385-1234[1]

Contact e-mail: osaretin.agbonavbare@educ.uniben.edu

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Preprint statement: This article is a preprint and has not been peer-reviewed, under consideration and submitted to ScienceOpen Preprints for open peer review.

Links to data: Links to data:

||https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352878779_RELATIONSHIP_BETWEEN_AFFECTIVE_TENDENCY_SEX_AND_LIB

DOI: 10.14293/S2199-1006.1.SOR-.PP3OVSI.v1

Preprint first posted online: 01 July 2021

Keywords: Library Anxiety, Affective Tendency, Sex, Undergraduate

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN AFFECTIVE TENDENCY, SEX AND LIBRARY ANXIETY AMONG UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS

BY

PROF. (MRS.) ELIZABETH OMOTUNDE EGBOCHUKU

Department of Educational Evaluation and Counselling Psychology, Faculty of Education, University of Benin, Benin City.

+2348037190802, mamandidi@yahoo.co.uk!

DR. ISMAILA OLADIPO ADELEKE

Department of Educational Evaluation and Counselling Psychology, Faculty of Education, University of Benin, Benin City.

+2348036556410, zicoontop90@gmail.com

OSARETIN DAVID AGBONAVBARE

Department of Educational Evaluation and Counselling Psychology, Faculty of Education, University of Benin, Benin City.

+2348068085056, osaretin.agbonavbare@educ.uniben.edu

Abstract

Library anxiety is a type of fear that is associated with library user who becomes uncomfortable when using the library and its facilities. The aim of the study is to investigate the relationship between affective tendency, sex and library anxiety among undergraduate students and it’s implications for counselling using University of Benin as case study. A correlational research design was used to select a sample size of 200 from a population of 1546 registered users using simple random technique. Data was collected using the Affective Tendency and Library Anxiety Scale (ATLAS) adapted from Bostick (1992). The reliability was determined at 0.83 Cronbach Alpha. The results indicated there is no significant relationship between affective tendency and library anxiety, while sex differ significantly with library anxiety. Counsellors should engage students on orientation programmes and give out guidelines on how to study and read effectively in the library.

Introduction

The library is an important arm of a tertiary institution. It helps students and staffs to have proper growth and development, especially cognitive domain development. A library can be described as a place where informative materials of different formats are systematically acquired, organized, stored, preserve and dissimilated to users at the appropriate time in order to meet their information needs (Chima, Nwajei, & Akpom. 2015). As a result of the bulky information resources contain in the library, together with the skills and difficulty involve in the location of resources and interaction with librarians, student becomes hindered by fear and panic which in the long run affect the quality time they are supposed to spend in the library (Jiao and Onwuegbuzie, 2014). The theoretical framework for this study is the Grounded Theory by Mellon (1986). The grounded theory is founded to strengthen the relationship between the faculty staff and the librarians in rendering a better perspective to the diverse problems faced by the student during the course of their research work and providing the necessary information or guidance to the student, especially freshmen in the University. The theory explains student attitude and feelings towards the use of the library for research and the importance of faculty staffs and librarian’s relationship in making student use the library more efficiently and effectively. The theory enables students to confront their fears when they ask for assistance. In continuation of the Mellon Grounded theory, Kuhlthan undertook a study of the searching processes for higher schools students that planned of coming to the University, he focused mainly on the various processes that a student takes in searching for materials that relate to their current study, especially when they are in the process of researching for their projects.

Library Anxiety

Anxiety is founded on worries and fear. There is a period in one’s life that when one feels apprehensive and fearful about a particular thing or someone. This fear can be irrational, sense of terror, unusual bodily feeling such as dizziness, difficulty in breathing, trembling, shaking and a feeling of loss of control. Anxiety is worrying about upcoming events, and fear is the response given by the worries exhibited (Egbochuku, 2008). They often occur with other mental disorder such as depressive disorders, bipolar disorders, personality disorders, childhood disorders and dissociative disorders. Library Anxiety is fear is associated with library users. The idea of being afraid of the library and librarians was first coined library anxiety in (1986) by Mellon. Library anxiety can be defined as a negative feeling toward using an academic library (Bostick, 1992). Jiao and Onwuegbuzie (2011) asserted that library anxiety is an uncomfortable feeling which leads to a cognitive, affective, physiological and behavioural abnormality that interferes with their abilities to accomplish library tasks. They added that library anxiety is characterised by negative emotions including fear, tension, a feeling of uncertainty and helplessness, negative self-defeating thought and mental disorganization. In other studies, library anxiety has been defined as a negative feeling toward using an academic library. It has been found to interfere with student’s ability to process literacy-related information and to apply newly acquired knowledge to the information-seeking task and to effectively use such information gathered. A study by Jiao, Onwuegbuzie and Waytowich (2008) found that graduate students who committed the highest number of citation errors tended to indicate the highest levels of library anxiety, especially with staff, affective barriers and comfort in the library.

According to Egbochuku (2008), affects are physiological feeling of the body that produce biological effects in an individual. It is an outward expression of feelings and emotions. It is commonly experienced in the face or body posture which shows intense emotions. They are one of the ways of communicating inner thought to people or things around someone. Affective tendency include; feelings of inadequacy, confusion shyness and frustration. The affective tendency is one of the major causes of library anxiety because they carry a lot of energy and a constituent of emotion, feelings, motives and drive and they are usually complex and difficult to control, especially when it has become drained in the subconscious mind of the user. People use specific words to communicate inner emotions.

Affective tendency refers to the kind of barrier that makes users of the library facilities to feel too inadequate to use such facilities. Affective tendency in Bostick’s study (1992) refers to the students’ feelings of competencies and aptness in using the library. This feeling is characterized by incompetence, timidity, intimidation from fellow users or students in the library. They feel embarrassed when showing any element of incompetency, and always in the position to think that they are bothering the librarian whenever they intend to ask questions.

The affective tendency reveals a user’s personality structure, which usually appears in the form of feelings and emotions and stands as a hindrance to the effective use of the library. Lu and Adkins (2012) discovered that affective barrier was the greatest source of Library Anxiety.

Noori, Tareen and Mashwani (2017) explored Library Anxiety Among Students in UiTM which comprises of undergraduate and postgraduate students. This indicates in the study that there is a low level of affective tendency in the students' library anxiety. However, when other sub-groups in the scale were put into consideration, it was discovered that affective barriers were identified by students of UiTM as the lowest factor among the other barriers; whereas, a similar factor was found as the greatest source of library anxiety by the students of Missouri University (Adkins & Lu, 2012).

Sex is the biological traits that identify one to be male or female. Studies in the last decades have an indecisive result on whether or not anxiety experienced by students during their information seeking process differs between male and female. Studies have also shown that the anxiety level during the cause of seeking information in the library differs across different geographical locations. Previous studies revealed that library anxiety is higher in male compared to females. Al-kendari and Al. Qullaf (2004) found males to be experiencing a higher level of library anxiety than female, while Moon and Ansari (2011) found that females’ students have a higher level of library anxiety than the male counterparts. Some other researchers have also revealed that there is no sex difference in the level of library anxiety.

Bower’s (2010) and Lee’s (2011) revealed that sex does not show any statistical difference as a contributor to library anxiety. The level of anxiety experienced by female and male differs, especially as it relates to the personality of such student.

Anjaline and Saravanan (2018) gave an analytical study on Library Anxiety Among the Undergraduate Students in Colleges of Tirunelve District. The result reveals that library anxiety is more among the male respondents than female respondents. Therefore, academic users differ significantly in library anxiety among users in academic libraries based on sex. Erfanmannesh (2016) examined the effects of sex, level of study and age on various dimensions of the information seeking anxiety constructs among postgraduate students at a research-intensive University in Kuala Lumpar, Malaysia. The running an independent sample t-test revealed that female students were found to have reported statistically significantly higher levels of information seeking anxiety related to “barriers associated with information resources” and “access barriers” dimensions than did male students. Moreover, the results of running a 2 × 2 factorial ANOVA to test main and interaction effects of sex and level of study on various dimensions of the information seeking anxiety construct revealed gender to be having main effects on the information seeking anxiety dimension “barriers associated with information resources”. This finding indicated that there was a statistically significant difference in information seeking anxiety by gender. Rehman (2014) used AQAK (Anwar, 2012) on undergraduate students of the University of Punjab and found that most of the respondents experienced a mild level of library anxiety and that sex had no significant relationship with library anxiety. Jan, Anwar and Warraich (2016) gender-related library anxiety statistics revealed that male respondents with a mean score of 2.97 (SD 0.39) scored higher than female respondents (M 2.85, SD 0.45).

Library anxiety has resulted to a student becoming shy, intimidated, frightened to use the library facilities, spending less time reading, poor study skills, low self-concept, poor academic achievement, over-reliance online on materials, poor research work or report, plagiarism, shallow knowledge about topics, weak internal motivation. Among others, the above consequences of library anxiety comes as a result of the unapproachability of the staff, the big structure of the library, unfamiliarity with the operation of the electronic gadgets, irregularity in book shelving process, intimidation from fellow students, instability of the academic calendar, lack of trained library personnel, computer illiteracy in the part of the staff, lack of cataloguing skills, outdated books, periodic test tension, communication gap between staff and student, lack of orientation on library use and inadequate counselling services in high institutions. Janaki & Noor Harun (2015) asserted that problems contributing to library anxiety are heavily faced by a fresh student because they lack the proper orientation about the services that can be provided by the library. Although researches have been done in this area, but it was discovered there is no sufficient literature to show the relationship between affective tendency, sexual difference and library anxiety as it relates to counselling and this is the gap that this study sought to fill.

The following research questions were answered in the study:

• What are the factors that contribute to library anxiety among undergraduate students?

• What is the amount of library anxiety among undergraduate student?

• Is there any relationship between library anxiety and sex?

• Is there any relationship between affective tendency and library anxiety?

The following hypotheses are will be tested at 0.05 level of significance

• There is no significant difference between library anxiety and sex

• There is no significant relationship between affective tendency and library anxiety.

Methodology

The design of the study will be a correlational survey research design. This design helps to show the degree at which affective tendency various psychological factors (affective barrier, staff barrier, mechanical barrier) and sex difference relates to anxiety among undergraduate students in the University of Benin. The population of the study consists of a total of one thousand, five hundred and forty (1540) male and female Undergraduate students who are registered library users in the Faculty of Education. Faculty of Education was chosen for this study because has different courses that are also studied in other faculties in the University. Faculty of Education has eight (8) departments (Educational Evaluation and Counselling Psychology, Adult and Non- formal Education, Health Safety and Environmental Education,

Human Kinetics and Sport Science, Curriculum and Instructional Technology, Department of

Educational Management, Department of Educational Foundations, Vocational and Technical

Education. The sample size of two hundred (200) which represents 13% of the total population. A random sampling technique will be used to select the sample across the composition of the population. Data was collected using the 30 items Affective Tendency and Library Anxiety Scale (ATLAS) in Likert Scale format adapted from Bostick 1992. The instruments was validated by three researchers in the department of Educational Evaluation and Counselling Psychology. The reliability of the instrument was determined at 0.83 Cronbach Alpha. Data was collected personally by the researcher with the assistance of the librarians. Data was analysed using mean, standard deviations, Pearson Correlation and T-test statistics with the aid of SPSS 25 Statistical Package.

Findings

Research Question 1. What are the factors that contribute to library anxiety among undergraduate students?

Table 1: Mean and Standard Deviation of Library Anxiety Factors

Library Anxiety Staff Affective Comfort Knowledge Mechanical Factors Barrier Barrier with the of the Barrier library Library

Table 1 shows the factors that contribute to library anxiety among undergraduate students in the University of Benin. Knowledge of the Library with 5 items is the largest factors that contribute to library anxiety with a mean value of 13.38 against the average mean of value 12.5, followed by mechanical barrier with a mean value of 11.88. Staff barrier with 5 items shows the least factor that contribute to library with a mean value of 8.12 against the average mean of 12.5.

Research Question 2. What is the amount of library anxiety among undergraduate student?

Table 2: Mean and Standard Deviation of Library Anxiety According to Sex

Sex | Sub. Scale Staff Affective Comfort Knowledge Mechanical Library

Barrier Barrier with the of the Barrier Anxiety library Library

In order to measure the library anxiety amount among undergraduate students, the decision was marked at 2.5, with 25 items which gives a mean of value 62.5, with sub factors of 5 items each, with a mean value of 12.5. The number of male who has suffer from library anxiety is less than the average with a mean value of 52.96. This means that library anxiety among male graduate students is low. The number of female who has suffer from library anxiety is less than the average with a mean value of 48.95. This means that library anxiety among females graduate students is low. This variation shows that male students suffer from library anxiety than female students. Among all the factors, Female students with 13.52 value are faced by mechanical barrier compare to their male counterpart with 13.46 value which is higher than the average.

Staff barrier is the least factor faced by male students with a mean value of 7.80 compare to female who has a 8.34 values below the average of 12.5. This shows that staff barrier has the lowest contribution to library anxiety among undergraduate students. Mean value 50.46 shows that library anxiety is low in the University of Benin when compare to the 62.5 average.

Hypotheses 1: There is no significant difference between library anxiety and sex.

Table 3: One sample T-test for Determining Library Anxiety According to Sex

Scale Mean MeanDiff. T df Sig.

*Test Value: 62.5

Table 3 shows that male students (52.99) feel more level of library anxiety than females students (48.95). Using p<0.0005, indicate that there is a significant difference between the male mean and the sex mean and also a significant difference between female mean and the sex mean with 13.55 decrease in library anxiety.

Hypotheses 2: There is no significant difference between affective tendency and library anxiety.

Table 4: Correlation of Library Anxiety and it’s sub scale with Affective Tendency

Variation Staff Affective Comfort Knowledge Mechanical Library

Barrier Barrier with the of the Barrier Anxiety library Library

*Correlation is significant at 0.05 level

Table 4 shows that affective tendency has a very low negative relationship with library anxiety with -0.091 value. The table also indicate that there is no significant relationship between affective tendency and library anxiety with 0.156 value. Mechanical barrier shows to have the weakest relationship with affective tendency among the five factors of library anxiety with 0.001 value while comfort in the library shows to have a low relationship with affective tendency.

Discussion

Library anxiety is a type of anxiety that share characteristics with specific phobia, social phobia, separation anxiety disorder and agoraphobia. Library anxiety is the type of anxiety that is described by persistent or excessive fear of the use of the library and its facilities (Jiao & Onwuegbuzie, 2011). Library anxiety shares some characteristics with specific phobia in that, it is only the library that the fear, worries and anxiety occurs, together with its facilities and resources. The findings indicated that among the various factors that contribute to library, knowledge of the library has the highest contribution to library anxiety among undergraduate students while staff barrier has the lowest contribution to library anxiety. This findings collaborate with the findings of Onwuegbuzie and Waytowich (2008) who revealed that students has the highest level of anxiety as a result of staff barrier, affective barrier and comfort in the library.

The findings also indicated that male suffers the highest level of library anxiety compare to female which is in collaboration with Anjaline and Saravamen (2018) who both revealed that library anxiety is more common with male respondents than female respondents. Female are more faced with mechanical barrier compare to male while female are more face with the problem of adequate knowledge of the library compare to male. Males are less faced we with staff barrier than their female counterpart. The findings also indicated that there is a statistical difference between library anxiety and sex where both female and male indicated a difference. Rehman (2014) indicated that sex has no significant relationship with library anxiety. It was found in the study that there is no significant relationship between affective tendency and library anxiety. The result showed a very low negative relationship with library anxiety. This means that when affective tendency decreases, there is a negligible increase in library anxiety. This findings is in disagreement with Lu and Adkin (2012) studies who revealed that affective tendency has high positive relationship with library anxiety.

Conclusion

Based on the results from the study, counsellors should assist in reducing some of the contributing factors of library anxiety especially inadequate knowledge of the library use and its facilities. Counsellors together with librarian should organise orientation programme which will enlighten students on the functionalities of the library. Counsellors should also demonstrate and teach students the various relaxation techniques while in the library. The counsellors should also teach students the best reading habit at different circumstances. The librarian should be accessible and ready to provide helping hand to students who are faced with the difficulty of operating the mechanical equipment or electronic gadgets. Counsellors should counsel students that have shown reoccurring affective tendency when using the library.

Implication for Counselling

1. Counsellors should assist students in maintaining good study habit.

2. Counsellors should regularly give orientation services to library users in collaboration with librarian.

3. Counsellors should teach students relaxation techniques that can be used in the library.

4. Counsellors should provide students with reading techniques manual or guide.

5. Counsellors should regularly monitor and following students up that has shown symbols of library phobia.

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