Akbar Majidi, Faegeh Mohammadi Ghazi Jahani, Fatemeh Najafvand Drikvandi,
Volume 12, Issue 3 (12-2025)
Abstract
Purpose: This study aimed to investigate whether critical thinking mediates the relationship between mindfulness and online information-seeking behavior among high school students in Khorramabad.
Methods: The present study was applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-correlational in terms of data collection method. The statistical population of the study included all male and female students of the second high school level in Khorramabad city in the academic year 2023-2024, totaling 11,000 people, of whom 386 were selected as samples by cluster random sampling. The research tools were the Ricketts Critical Thinking Questionnaire (2003), the Ryan and Brown Mindfulness Scale (2003), and the Karimi Information Seeking Behavior Questionnaire (2011), with Cronbach's alpha coefficients of 0.75, 0.80, and 0.74, respectively. Due to the non-normal distribution of the data, non-parametric statistical tests were used. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics techniques and Spearman correlation test and structural equation modeling using SPSS version 22 and SmartPLS3 software.
Findings: The results of the Spearman correlation test showed that there is a significant relationship between mindfulness and critical thinking with students' online information seeking behavior. Structural equation modeling analysis using the Smart PLS method showed that all variables have high reliability. The composite reliability and Cronbach's alpha coefficient and the mean extracted variance for all variables are higher than 0.7, indicating that the current research instruments have a good fit. Mindfulness indirectly affects online information seeking behavior (through the role of critical thinking) and it is able to predict 91.3 percent of information seeking behavior. Therefore, the effect of mindfulness on students' online information seeking behavior through the mediating role of critical thinking was confirmed.
Conclusion: Mindfulness has an impact on students' information-seeking behavior through the mediating role of critical thinking. Accordingly, providing mindfulness exercises to students can provide the basis for strengthening critical thinking and improving students' information-seeking behavior.
