RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RECOGNITION OF INFORMATION NEEDS, ACCESS TO INFORMATION AND RESEARCH PRODUCTIVITY AMONG LECTURERS IN FEDERAL UNIVERSITIES IN NORTH-WEST, NIGERIA

In order to conduct quality research, lecturers must acquire certain skills that will allow them to generate a vast amount of research products. The paper examined relationship between lecturers’ ability to recognize information needs, ability to access information and research productivity. Two research questions guided the study and two hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The descriptive correlational research design was employed. The population of the study was 9,839 lecturers of 12 federal universities in the north-west states of Nigeria. The sample size of the study was 368 lecturers and a random selection of respondents was made from each university. The research instrument was administered to the respondents directly by the researchers. The returned copies of questionnaire was analyzed using inferential statistics. The Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient r was used to answer the research questions and regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses. Findings from data analysis revealed that, there is significant strong positive relationship between lecturers’ score on the ability to recognize information needs and research productivity in the federal universities in the North-west, Nigeria. The findings also revealed that, there is significant weak positive relationship between lecturers’ score on the ability to access information and research productivity in the federal universities in the North-west, Nigeria. The study recommended that, universities should provide training in information literacy through a variety of channels, including lectures, conferences, and symposiums. It was also recommended that, should to make available information resources on various sources to lecturers and other users in such a way that users and devise mechanisms that facilitate access and retrieval.