Literature and Practice in the Creation of Online Information Literacy Tutorials in New Zealand and Australian University Libraries: Results of Content Analysis of Online Tutorials

Introduction: This research users inferential statistical tests to explore the statistical significance of observed relationships between the frequencies of elements of online tutorials found within the academic literature, and the frequencies of those same elements as found in online tutorials produced by New Zealand and Australian university libraries. Frequencies were also compared between Australian and New Zealand tutorials, and also between two types of tutorials. Method: Elements of online tutorials were located in articles from highly ranked journals, and other germane sources. A content analysis of a sample of online tutorials was carried out, using the elements identified as criteria. Findings and conclusion: No statistically significant differences were found between the frequencies of elements in the literature and elements in the online tutorials, despite descriptive statistics indicating otherwise. A slight positive correlation was found between the frequencies of elements in tutorials produced in the two different countries. However, the small size of the literature sample severely restricts the conclusiveness of these results.