INFORMATION SERVICES AND USER STUDIES

Transcription

1 INFORMATION SERVICES AND USER STUDIES Ms. Patience Emefa Dzandza College of Education: School of Information and Communication Department of Information Studies

2 INFORMATION SEEKING BEHAVIOUR

3 Introduction Most people who need information very likely turn to friends, neighbors, colleagues etc. Information seekers turn to people they are close to because it saves time and cost When information need is complex individuals turn to the libraries

4 Introduction Today a lot of people use the internet for what they need In Africa not much premium is placed on information so most people hardly seek information whether from a library or from the Internet.

5 Definition of Concept Different terms or concepts have been used in the literature: Information seeking Information need Looking for information Finding information Information habit personal information management Information related human behaviour etc

6 Definition of Concept Information behaviour according to Bates (2010) is a preferred term. And it describes the many ways in which humans interact with information, in particular, the ways in which people seek and utilize information. Information behavior is also the term of art used in library and information science to refer to a subdiscipline that engages in a wide range of types of research conducted in order to understand the human relationship to information.

7 Definition of Concept Wilson (2000) also difined it as: The totality of human behaviour in relation to source and channels of information, including both active and passive information seeking and information use.

8 Definition of Concept Information seeking behaviour is an aspect of information literacy. Boon et al. (2007,) describe the relation between these two concepts as: one step towards becoming information literate is to acquire an appropriate information seeking behaviour.

9 Definition of Concept Research on information behaviour relates to the totality of human behaviour in relation to sources and channels of information, including both active and passive information seeking, and information use.

10 The Nested Model of Information Life world Information Behaviour Information search behaviour behaviour Information Seeking Wilson (1999) pointed out that information search behaviour is a subset of information seeking behaviour and that information seeking behaviour is in turn only a subset of all possible information behaviour which exist in the life world an individual

11 Historical Background Interest in this area developed out of several streams: Librarians wanted to understand library users better, government agencies wanted to understand how scientists and engineers used technical information in order to promote more rapid uptake of new research results, And social scientists generally were interested in the social uses of information in a variety of senses.

12 Historical Background In more recent years, social studies of information technology and social informatics have contributed to this area as well. Within library and information science, these various streams of research are drawn on as they can contribute to a richer understanding of information behavior.

13 Historical Background As a preferred term, information behaviour has its evolutionary path. The origins of human information seeking behavior are found in works on the users of libraries and in readership studies in general.

14 Historical Background The post-war increase in the amount of scientific literature which was either newly published or recently released from war-time restrictions led, in 1948, to the Royal Society Scientific Information Conference (1948), which marks the beginning of the modern study of human information seeking behavior. However, the subject goes rather further back in time.

15 Historical Background For example, The Library Survey(McDiarmid, 1940) referred to various kinds of surveys dating back to 1916 (Ayres & McKinnie, 1916) and with a spate of studies in the 1920s and 1930s. These studies were about library use and, in general, they were concerned less with the needs that led people to the library as a source of information and more with issues such as the social class make-up of the clientele.

16 Historical Background It would be true to say, however, that the Royal Society Conference was the real beginning of a concern with understanding how people used information in relation to their work and, particularly, how they used it in science and technology. The significance of 1948 as a start date is evident, for example, in a study led by Menzel at the University of Columbia (Menzel, et al., 1960), in which all of the references are from 1948 on wards.

17 Historical Background During the 1960s and 70s, there was an expansion of interest in information behaviour relevant to the social sciences. These developments were fuelled by an enthusiasm, particularly in the USA, for evaluation studies of government programmes to address poverty, inequality etc. The developments in the USA provided both new areas for information behaviour studies, and new tools; Qualitative and quantitative to address them

18 Historical Background The term information behaviour began to be used widely during the 1970s. Previously terms like User studies Information needs and use Communication behaviour

19 Models of information behaviour A model may be described as a framework for thinking about a problem and may evolve into a statement of the relationships among theoretical propositions.

20 Models of information behaviour Different models have been developed to help us understand the way in which human behave when they are in need of information: Dervin s sense-making model Bystrom and Jarvelin s work-task information seeking and retrieval model Savolainen s Everyday life information Seeking model Kuhlthau s Information Search Process Model Ellis s Behavioural Model Wilson s Information-seeking Behaviour Model

21 Ellis s Behavioral Model Ellis (1989, 2005), using a grounded-theory approach, build a descriptive model based on a series of empirical studies of social and natural scientist, humanities scholars in academe and industrial engineers and research scientists. It has been tested in subsequent studies, most recently in the context of an engineering company It characterizes eight types of information activities or features observed along the typical stages of research projects.

22 Information users Starting: the means employed by the user to begin seeking information, for example, asking some knowledgeable colleague; Chaining: following footnotes and citations in known material or 'forward' chaining from known items through citation indexes; Browsing: 'semi-directed or semi-structured searching Differentiating: using known differences in information sources as a way of filtering the amount of information obtained;

23 Information users Monitoring: keeping up-to-date or current awareness searching; Extracting: selectively identifying relevant material in an information source; Verifying: checking the accuracy of information; Ending: which may be defined as 'tying up loose ends' through a final search.

24 Starting: Starting is the means employed by the user to begin seeking information. For example, asking some knowledgeable colleagues. It comprises those activities that form the initial search for information like identifying sources of interest that could serve as starting points of the search. Identified sources often include familiar sources.

25 Starting: The likelihood of a source being selected depends on the perceived accessibility and quality of the information from that source. Perceived accessibility, which is the amount of effort and time needed to make contact with and use a source, is a strong predictor of source use for many groups of information users (such as engineers and scientists (Allen 1977)

26 Starting: However, in situations when ambiguity is high and information reliability important, less accessible sources of perceived high quality are consulted. While searching these initial sources, they may point to, suggest, or recommend additional sources or references.

27 Chaining: Following up on these new leads from an initial source is the activity of chaining, This can be backward or forward. Backward chaining takes place when pointers or references from an initial source are followed, and is a well established routine of information seeking among scientists and researchers.

28 Chaining: Forward chaining identifies and follows up on other sources such as footnotes and citations of the initial source or document. It is less commonly used, because people are unaware of it or the required bibliographical tools are unavailable.

29 Browsing: Browsing is the activity of 'semi-directed or semistructured searching' in areas of potential search. Chang and Rice (1993) define browsing as "the process of exposing oneself to a resource space by scanning its content (objects or representations) and/or structure, possibly resulting in awareness of unexpected or new content or paths in that resource space."

30 Browsing: Browsing takes place in many situations in which related information has been grouped together according to subject affinity. The individual often simplifies browsing by looking through tables of contents, lists of titles, subject headings, names of organizations or persons, abstracts and summaries, and so on.

31 Differentiating: The individual filters and selects from among the sources scanned by noticing differences between the nature and quality of the information offered. The differentiation process is likely to depend on the individual's prior or initial experiences with the sources, word-of-mouth recommendations from personal contacts, or reviews in published sources.

32 Differentiating: Taylor (1986) identifies six categories of criteria by which an individual can select and differentiate between sources: ease of use, noise reduction, quality, adaptability, time savings, and cost savings.

33 Monitoring: It is the activity of keeping abreast of developments in an area by regularly following particular sources. The individual monitors by concentrating on a small number of core sources which vary between professional groups, but usually include key personal contacts and publications. For example, social scientists and physicists track developments through core journals, online search updates, newspapers, conferences, magazines, books, catalogues, etc.

34 Extracting: It is the activity of systematically working through a particular source or sources in order to identify material of interest. It selectively identifies the relevant material in an information source; As a form of retrospective searching, extracting may be achieved by directly consulting the source, or by indirectly looking through bibliographies, indexes, or online databases.

35 Extracting: Retrospective searching tends to be labor intensive, and is more likely when there is a need for comprehensive or historical information on a topic.

36 Verifying: It involves checking the accuracy of information that is obtained by the user from the various sources.

37 Ending: Ending can defined as 'tying up loose ends' through a final search. Here the task of information seeking is complete and the user has obtained all the required information, thus satisfying his needs.

38 Wilson s Information-seeking Behaviour Model

39 Wilson s Information-seeking Behaviour Model It emphasizes the complexities of context for information seeking. This model has been labeled as information behaviour model because it is clear that they are not information search models in the sense that might be understood by the information retrieval researcher.

40 Wilson s Information-seeking Behaviour Model Wilson (1996) proposed an inter-disciplinary, general model of human information behavior. Wilson s model explains three aspects of information seeking: Why information seeking is more likely to occur in response to some needs more than others; why some information sources get more use than others; why people s perceptions of their own efficacy influences their success in meeting an information goal.

41 Wilson s Information-seeking Behaviour Model In particular, Wilson draws on research in health information, advertising, economics, communication and organizational behavior.

42 Wilson s Information-seeking Behaviour Model His model includes the following elements: character, or context, of an information need; The model begins with the person-in-context in which information needs arise. The needs are seen, as secondary needs caused by primary needs, which are of a physiological, cognitive or affective nature. The rise of a particular need is influenced by the context, which can be the person him- or herself, or the role the person plays in work, life or the environment

43 Activating mechanism Activating mechanism, including stress/coping theory, that links needs and action; Between the levels of person-in-context and the decision to look for information is what Wilson calls the concept of activating mechanism. In this he notes that not every need leads to information seeking. In order to explain what stimulates and motivates information seeking, Wilson makes use of the stress coping theory to show that not all needs lead to information seeking.

44 Intervening variables Intervening variables (or barriers to seeking information), including psychological, demographic, role-related or interpersonal, environmental, and source characteristics.

45 Activating mechanism activating mechanism (or the decision to engage in information seeking behavior), including risk/reward theory: which may help to explain which sources of information may be used more than others by a given individual

46 activating mechanism The risk/reward theory is applied to explain why in some situations, people seek information and not in others, and why certain information sources are more frequently used than others. Wilson uses the social learning theory to explain why people may, or may not pursue a goal successfully based on their perceptions of their own efficacy

47 Activating mechanism The social learning theory also embodies the concept of self-efficacy, the idea of 'the conviction that one can successfully execute the behavior required to produce the {desired} outcome'

48 Information Seeking Behaviour Wilson breaks down the "Information Seeking Behaviour" into four phases: Passive Attention: just acquiring information without seeking for it e.g. listening to the radio and watching TV. Passive Search: almost accidental when the seeker acquires relevant information. Active Search: seeker actively seeks for information. On Going Search: a continuation of what the seeker has acquired during Active Search, allowing better information processing, "Update or expand one's framework".

49 Information Processing and Use The last stage of the model include components about information processing and use. Information obtained by a user is processed, becomes an item of the user s knowledge, and is used directly or indirectly, to influence the environment and, as a consequence, create new information needs