ENADE indicators for themanagement of university libraries

ABSTRACT The functions of university libraries (UL) are to provide the bibliographic, documentary and informational infrastructure to support scientific activities, as well as to disseminate the knowledge produced by their academic entity to society. To achieve their mission, ULs need to be evaluated and, in Brazil, this evaluation is done by the National Student Performance Exam (ENADE - ExameNacional de Desempenho de Estudantes) through the Student Questionnaire (SQ). The present study evaluated the quality of the indicators used in the SQ for the evaluation of ULs. This quality was evaluated by considering the presence of the following essential properties for good indicators: stability, validity and importance of parameters. For the stability analysis, the SQ questions were repeated in the period from 2004 to 2014. Regarding the validity, a correlation analysis was performed between the results obtained in the SQ with another theoretically related indicator. For the analysis of the importance, a group of specialists was formed, composed of librarians with experience in the management of ULs and, through the Delphi method, indicators were evaluated as to their relevance. This work verified that the indicators used by ENADE are considered important, but they do not have stability and validity.