An Investigation into Users’ Role in the Credibility Assessment of Web-Based Information from the Point of View of IAU Faculty Members

In different researches carried out on the credibility assessment of Web-based information, different factors and levels are taken into account that include websites, information sources, information, messages and the context within which credibility assessment is made. There are still other factors which do not depend on the source in question, but they are related to user searching the information and his or her haracteristics, attributes and behaviors. In the present study, first the role and position of users in credibility assessment is reviewed through investigating 7 credibility assessment models. Then the most important factors and criteria of the models are illustrated according to views of faculty members. The method of the study is survey and library-based. The population includes 1975 full-time faculty members of District 1 of Islamic Azad University (IAU). Based on Cochran formula, the sample of study includes 322 participants. To test the hypotheses, one-way variance and t-test were used. The data were processed in SPSS. The findings show that such criteria as user’s purpose, user’s competence (topic knowledge and the knowledge of information technology, the Internet and evaluation) and motivation are among the most important criteria for users’ credibility assessment of information, from the faculty members’ perspective. There is a significant relationship between the department of the faculty members belong to, the degree of their familiarity with the Internet and the criteria they use for evaluating Web-based information.