Digital Literacy as Correlates of Electronic Information Resources Use by Postgraduate Students in South-South, Nigeria

The academic environment increasingly relies on Electronic Information Resources (EIRs) for teaching, learning, and research, offering advantages such as accessibility, resource diversity, and up-to-date information. However, postgraduate students in South-South Nigeria underutilize EIRs, potentially due to inadequate digital literacy skills. This study investigates the relationship between digital literacy and EIR usage among postgraduate students, aiming to identify digital literacy skills, usage patterns, and purposes of EIR utilization. Employing a correlational descriptive survey design, the study sampled 150 postgraduate students from four universities using a census sampling technique. Data were collected with a validated and reliable questionnaire (split-half reliability coefficient = 0.73) and analyzed using descriptive statistics and Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation at a 0.05 significance level. Findings revealed that students demonstrated moderate to high digital literacy, with an aggregate mean of 3.15. Skills such as recognizing access methods (mean = 3.84) and adopting new IT products (mean = 3.80) were strong, while content creation and multimedia formatting skills were weaker. Usage patterns indicated that resources like online discussion groups (mean = 3.80) and e-newspapers (mean = 4.07) were frequently used, whereas others, such as e-data archives (mean = 1.97), were underutilized. EIRs were primarily used for academic purposes, including updating knowledge (mean = 4.07) and project work (mean = 4.06). A very strong positive correlation (r = 0.983, p < 0.001) between digital literacy and EIR usage was observed. The study concludes that enhanced digital literacy significantly improves EIR utilization. It recommends targeted training programs to address digital literacy gaps, promotional efforts to increase awareness of underutilized resources, and integration of EIRs into academic curricula to maximize their benefits for postgraduate research and learning.