Perceptions of grassroots library users regarding the scientific and technical information service ecosystem in public libraries: An exploratory factor analysis in Vietnam

This study tests a single organising proposition: whether the analytical separability of service quality, information behaviour and information literacy, a foundational assumption of the measurement frameworks being applied, accurately reflects how grassroots library users in Vietnam actually experience access to scientific and technical information (STI). A 43-item instrument, built on 10 theoretically prescribed constructs, was administered to 837 users across 10 purposively selected provinces and analysed through exploratory factor analysis (Principal Axis Factoring, Promax rotation). The 10 constructs converged into three strongly intercorrelated factors ( r = 0.656–0.785) explaining 66.92% of the variance; this structure was independently re-derived through EFA conducted separately on two sample halves and re-confirmed on a holdout half of the same sample ( n = 419), and further corroborated through confirmatory bifactor analysis, in which a dominant general factor (ECV = 0.879; omega-H = 0.959) stood above three specific factors of limited independent weight. Information ability, moreover, did not emerge as a separable personal competency but instead loaded onto factors reflecting either the service environment or information behaviour. The evidence indicates that the separability assumed by the frameworks being applied does not match how grassroots users experience access to information, which instead occurs as a single undifferentiated whole; the finding carries implications for the cross-institutional validity of these measurement frameworks and for the relational understanding of information literacy.