A study of the determinants of postgraduate students’ satisfaction of using online research databases

In today’s technology-enriched environment, online research databases have become an indispensable tool in learning and research activities. Libraries worldwide have incorporated them as an integral part of their current service delivery. This study intends to determine whether the technology satisfaction model (TSM) validly measures postgraduate students’ satisfaction of using online research databases in an academic library. It further explores the relationships among antecedents within the model. To measure the components of the TSM, the stratified random sampling strategy was used to conduct a survey with 300 postgraduate students from six faculties of COMSATS University Islamabad (CUI) in Pakistan. The data were statistically analysed using the Rasch model and structural equation modelling (SEM). The results of the study illustrate direct and indirect associations among the exogenous, endogenous and mediating variables of the TSM, with the studied postgraduate students’ computer self-efficacy playing a crucial role in influencing their satisfaction. The TSM shows that 69% of the variance in the postgraduate students’ satisfaction can be explained by perceived usefulness, computer self-efficacy and perceived ease of use, which confirm that the TSM has a strong predictive power and is viable for measuring endogenous variable. The findings also make a significant contribution to the testing of databases for academics, service providers and researchers in higher education.