A Cross-Association Analysis of Scientific Designations (Grades) With the ‘Extent of Use of Electronic Information Resources’ And the ‘Purpose of Use of the Internet’ Amongst The Indian Aerospace Scientists and Engineers of Bangalore

Abstract

Aerospace is seen as a key technology today owing to its growth in Asia in general and India in particular. Indian aerospace scientists and engineers currently working on strategically important projects depend heavily on rapid collection of information from various electronic information resources. Seeking information through e-resources is an upcoming and an endearing activity. The coming of the Internet has totally transformed the way scientific communication has spread among the scientists and engineers in general across the world and more specifically amongst the aerospace scientists and engineers. Aerospace scientists and engineers greatly depend upon the network and Internet technologies for accessing electronic information resources (most importantly electronic journals) related to aerospace engineering right at their desktops. The Indian aerospace scientists and engineers representing the various aerospace organizations in Bangalore belong to different scientific designations or cadres or grades. These designations represent their scientific hierarchy within the organization. As part of an ongoing research, a questionnaire based survey was undertaken to study the association of scientific designations with the ‘Extent of Use of electronic information resources’ and ‘Purpose of the Use of the Internet’. The study has been restricted to the geographic boundary of the city of Bangalore and the selected 16 aerospace Indian organizations. The present analysis is purely based on the 583 responses that were found suitable for the study out of the 625 questionnaires distributed. The responses from the participants towards the ‘extent of use of electronic information resources’ and the ‘Purpose of Use of the Internet’ versus the‘ association of scientific designations’ were graded on a scale of 0 to 4 with 4 representing ‘Most Frequently’. The major findings that the authors would like to report in this paper are: (a) The χ2 test indicates that the different grades (designations) of the aerospace scientists and engineers (Chi-Square = 156.599, P = 0.0438) by the ‘Use of Electronic Information Resources’ have significant association, and ‘Purpose of Use of the Internet’ (Chi-Square = 124.452, P = 0.5722) have no significant association.This implies that percentages of preference for these different grades (designations) of aerospace scientists and engineers by the ‘Extent of Use of Electronic Information Resources’ are not approximately the same and the ‘Purpose of Use of the Internet’ are approximately the same. (b) Hence, the authors infer that the ‘Extent of Use of Electronic Information Resources’ show a dissimilar pattern of use, and the ‘Purpose of Use of the Internet’ show a similar pattern of use amongst the aerospace scientists and engineers with regard to the different designations/grades of the selected 16 aerospace organizations.