Abstract

• The main purpose of this study was to investigate the critical thinking skills and information literacy of students from universities in Sagaing District. Descriptive survey method and quantitative research design were used in this study. The specific objectives were to explore the differences between critical thinking skills and information literacy of students by gender, grade, age, and university and to investigate the relationship between critical thinking skills and information literacy of students. A total of 941 students (male = 475 and female = 466) were selected as the participants of this study through simple random sampling technique. To measure students’ critical thinking skills and information literacy, Critical Thinking Skills Questionnaire (Orszag, 2015) and Information Literacy Survey Instrument (Kovalik, Yutzey, & Piazza, 2013) were used respectively. Each of these items was on the four-point Likert type. The quantitative data were analyzed by descriptive statistics, independent sample t test, one-way ANOVA, Pearson product-moment correlation and linear regression analysis. According to the result, critical thinking skills of male students were better than that of female students. And then, it was found that there were no significant differences in students’ critical thinking skills by grade, age and university. Similarly, it was found that there were no significant differences in students’ information literacy by gender, grade and age. Then, ANOVA result reported that there was significant difference in students’ information literacy by university. University 3 was statistically significant difference from University 1 and University 4 and then, University 5 was significant difference from University 1 in information literacy. Finally, there was statistically significant positive correlation in critical thinking skills and information literacy of students (r=.505, p<.01). Moreover, the regression analysis result indicated that the critical thinking skills could explain 25% of information literacy.