Abstract.

The article presents the results of an investigation about information competency assessment of mexican Higher Education Institutions students. The information literacy describes an amount of skills related to information. These abilities together are also called information competency. This article aims to achieve the following objectives 1) examine the level of each of the information competencies in Mexican university students, 2) analyze the relationship between the level in each of information competencies and the semester, and 3) analyze the relationship between the level in each of the information competencies and the grade point average. The Information Competencies Assessment for University Students (ECI-EU) was used. This scale is composed by five subscales: Information Need, Information Access, Information Evaluation, Information Use and Information Ethics. The subscales were developed for this study; the psychometric properties are intended to be analyzed on future studies. Incidental sampling was conducted on psychology students and the instrument was applied to 62 participants. As a product of the results analysis, it was found an adequate reliability of the subscales according to the values of Cronbach's Alpha. On the subscale Information Use, the 87.1% of the participants scored above the media range; on the contrary, on the subscale Information Evaluation 61.3% of the sample scored below the media range. On the other 3 subscales, almost all the scores are within the media range. Only one significant (negative) correlation was found, between the GPA and the subscale Information Evaluation.

Keyword: Information competency; information literacy; university students; assessment; reliability.