Perceived quality as determinants of e-book usage among postgraduate students in selected universities in South-West, Nigeria

Abstract

This paper examined perceived quality as a determinant of e-book usage among postgraduate students in selected southwest universities in Nigeria. The objective of the study was to determine the perception of quality of e-books among postgraduate students in universities in Southwest, Nigeria. The descriptive survey design was adopted and the instrument for data collection was questionnaire. The population of the study comprised postgraduate students from the University of the three selected Universities totaling 13, 500 out of which the sample size was 390 using simple random sampling technique among the three Selected Universities. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics. The hypotheses were tested using linear regression. Content-related approach validation was conducted to ensure the validity of the instrument while Cronbach alpha was used to test the reliability of the instrument. Findings revealed that postgraduate students have a positive perception of the quality of e-books. The study concluded that there was a significant relationship between perceived quality and the extent of e-book usage. The study recommended that; the government should allocate budget for both federal and state-owned universities to subscribe to the appropriate e-book website for the benefit of staff, students, and academic researchers for research. Also, libraries should constitute e-librarian team that will be receiving, answering queries and exchanging e-books with the e-users via university webpage among others.