Search (39 results, page 1 of 2)

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Abstract

This article explores the role of scenarios (or use-oriented design representations) in the Afya project as a participatory action research (PAR) tool for studying information seeking and use across the "digital divide." With the aim of improving access to health information and services for Black women, the Afya project has involved forging community-level partnerships with SisterNet, a local grassroots group of Black women devoted to improving their physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual health. In the context of community health care, scenarios in the Afya project as a socially grounded planning and design methodology have taken the form of personal narratives of Black women that capture their social experiences and typical problematic health situations. Scenarios of Black women point towards the need to foster social justice by nurturing equitable and participative social activities around technological development and use associated with health information services. Scenarios also suggest specific action-oriented strategies for empowering Black women to build social and digital technologies that we hope will make the provision of health care in our community more just.

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Abstract

Meho and Tibbo show that the Ellis model of information seeking applies to a web environment by way of a replication of his study in this case using behavior of social science faculty studying stateless nations, a group diverse in skills, origins, and research specialities. Data were collected by way of e-mail interviews. Material on stateless nations was limited to papers in English on social science topics published between 1998 and 2000. Of these 251 had 212 unique authors identified as academic scholars and had sufficient information to provide e-mail addresses. Of the 139 whose addresses were located, 9 who were physically close were reserved for face to face interviews, and of the remainder 60 agreed to participate and responded to the 25 open ended question interview. Follow up questions generated a 75% response. Of the possible face to face interviews five agreed to participate and provided 26 thousand words as opposed to 69 thousand by the 45 e-mail participants. The activities of the Ellis model are confirmed but four additional activities are also identified. These are accessing, i.e. finding the material identified in indirect sources of information; networking, or the maintaining of close contacts with a wide range of colleagues and other human sources; verifying, i.e. checking the accuracy of new information; and information managing, the filing and organizing of collected information. All activities are grouped into four stages searching, accessing, processing, and ending.

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Abstract

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to determine the extent to which two existing models of information behaviour could explain the information behaviour of visually impaired people seeking health and social care information. Design/methodology/approach - The research was conducted within a constructivist paradigm. A total of 28 semi-structured interviews (face-to-face or telephone) with 31 visually impaired people were conducted. Framework analysis was used to analyse the results. Findings - This study identified several factors that may affect a visually impaired person's information behaviour. These related to the presence of other health conditions or disabilities, participants' understanding of the word "information", their interactions with information providers, their degree of independence, the support they received from friends and family, their acceptance of their own visual impairment, as well as their awareness of other visual impairments, their registration status and their willingness and ability to pay for aids, adaptations and equipment. Originality/ value - This study provides a new and valuable insight into the information behaviour of visually impaired people, as well as testing the applicability of a specific and generic information model to the information behaviour of visually impaired people seeking health and social care information.

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Abstract

This research draws on longitudinal network data from an online community to examine patterns of users' behavior and social interaction, and infer the processes underpinning dynamics of system use. The online community represents a prototypical example of a complex evolving social network in which connections between users are established over time by online messages. We study the evolution of a variety of properties since the inception of the system, including how users create, reciprocate, and deepen relationships with one another, variations in users' gregariousness and popularity, reachability and typical distances among users, and the degree of local redundancy in the system. Results indicate that the system is a small world characterized by the emergence, in its early stages, of a hub-dominated structure with heterogeneity in users' behavior. We investigate whether hubs are responsible for holding the system together and facilitating information flow, examine first-mover advantages underpinning users' ability to rise to system prominence, and uncover gender differences in users' gregariousness, popularity, and local redundancy. We discuss the implications of the results for research on system use and evolving social networks, and for a host of applications, including information diffusion, communities of practice, and the security and robustness of information systems.

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Abstract

This study focuses on the ways in which people define their source preferences in the context of seeking orienting information for nonwork purposes. The conceptual framework of the study combines ideas drawn from social phenomenology and information-seeking studies. The study utilizes Alfred Schutz's model describing the ways in which actors structure everyday knowledge into regions of decreasing relevance. It is assumed that this structuring based on the actor's interest at hand is also reflected in the ways in which an actor prefers information sources and channels. The concept of information source horizon is used to elicit articulations of source preferences. The empirical part of the study draws on interviews with 20 individuals active in environmental issues. Printed media (newspapers), the Internet, and broadcast media (radio, television) were preferred in seeking for orienting information. The major source preferences were content of information, and availability and accessibility. Usability of information sources, user characteristics such as media habits, and situational factors were mentioned less frequently as preference criteria.

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Abstract

Researchers evaluated the ability of 4th and 5th grade science and social science students to create Dublin Core metadata to describe their own images for inclusion in Digital Portfolio Archives

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Abstract

Finding information an the Web can be a much more complex search process than previously experienced an many pre-Web information retrieval systems given that finding content online does not have to happen via a search algorithm typed into a search field. Rather, the Web allows for a myriad of search strategies. Although there are numerous studies of Web search techniques, these studies often limit their focus to just one part of the search process and are not based an the behavior of the general user population, nor do they include information about the users. To remedy these shortcomings, this project looks at how peopie find information online in the context of their other media use, their general Internet use patterns, in addition to using information about their demographic background and social support networks. This article describes the methodology in detail, and suggests that a mix of survey instruments and in-person observations can yield the type of rich data set that is necessary to understand in depth the differences in people's information retrieval behavior online.

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Abstract

With the rapid diffusion of the Internet, researchers, policy makers, and users have raised concerns about online privacy, although few studies have integrated aspects of usage with psychological and attitudinal aspects of privacy. This study develops a model involving gender, generalized self-efficacy, psychological need for privacy, Internet use experience, Internet use fluency, and beliefs in privacy rights as potential influences on online privacy concerns. Survey responses from 413 college students were analyzed by bivariate correlations, hierarchical regression, and structural equation modeling. Regression results showed that beliefs in privacy rights and a psychological need for privacy were the main influences on online privacy concerns. The proposed structural model was not well supported by the data, but a revised model, linking self-efficacy with psychological need for privacy and indicating indirect influences of Internet experience and fluency on online privacy concerns about privacy through beliefs in privacy rights, was supported by the data.

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Date

22. 1.2000 17:52:11

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Source

Library and information science research. 22(2000) no.4, S.371-382

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Abstract

This study presents a test of the Anxiety-Expectation Mediation (AEM) model of library anxiety. The AEM model contains variables that are directly or indirectly related to information search performance, as measured by students' scores an their research proposals. This model posits that library anxiety and self-perception serve as factors that mediate the relationship between performance in writing a research proposal and other cognitive, personality, and demographic variables. The model was tested using 225 graduate students enrolled in several sections of an introductory-level course at a midsouthern university. Structural equation modeling techniques supported the AEM model. In particular, library anxiety and research achievement were reciprocally related. Furthermore, library anxiety mediated the relationship between research performance and the following variables: age, grade point average, learning style, academic procrastination, and self-perception. The path analysis also revealed a direct, positive path from self-perception to research performance. In addition, self-perception moderated the relationship between research achievement and academic procrastination, perfectionism, and hope. The AEM model of library anxiety suggests that Wine's (1980) Cognitive-Attentional-Interference theory, Onwuegbuzie, Jiao, and Bostick's (in press) ILP model of library anxiety, and Bandura's (1977) self-efficacy theory can be applied to the library and information context. Findings are discussed within the framework of current social-psychological models of educational achievement.

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Date

9. 2.2008 17:52:22

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Abstract

The results of a small qualitative study of gay and lesbian information users suggest that facet analysis as it is increasingly practised in the field of information architecture provides a promising avenue for improving information access to gay and lesbian information resources. Findings indicated that gay and lesbian information users have an acute sense of categorization grounded in the need to identify gay-positive physical and social spaces, and in their finely-honed practices of detecting gay "facets" to general information themes. They are also, however, very flexible and adaptable in their application of gay-related facet values, which suggests that browsing systems will have to be designed with considerable care.

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Abstract

The purposes of this study were to explore college students' perceptions, uses of, and motivations for using Wikipedia, and to understand their information behavior concerning Wikipedia based on social cognitive theory (SCT). A Web survey was used to collect data in the spring of 2008. The study sample consisted of students from an introductory undergraduate course at a large public university in the midwestern United States. A total of 134 students participated in the study, resulting in a 32.8% response rate. The major findings of the study include the following: Approximately one-third of the students reported using Wikipedia for academic purposes. The students tended to use Wikipedia for quickly checking facts and finding background information. They had positive past experiences with Wikipedia; however, interestingly, their perceptions of its information quality were not correspondingly high. The level of their confidence in evaluating Wikipedia's information quality was, at most, moderate. Respondents' past experience with Wikipedia, their positive emotional state, their disposition to believe information in Wikipedia, and information utility were positively related to their outcome expectations of Wikipedia. However, among the factors affecting outcome expectations, only information utility and respondents' positive emotions toward Wikipedia were related to their use of it. Further, when all of the independent variables, including the mediator, outcome expectations, were considered, only the variable information utility was related to Wikipedia use, which may imply a limited applicability of SCT to understanding Wikipedia use. However, more empirical evidence is needed to determine the applicability of this theory to Wikipedia use. Finally, this study supports the knowledge value of Wikipedia (Fallis, [2008]), despite students' cautious attitudes toward Wikipedia. The study suggests that educators and librarians need to provide better guidelines for using Wikipedia, rather than prohibiting Wikipedia use altogether.

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Abstract

Given that time is money, Web searching can be a very expensive proposition. Even with the best search technology, the usefulness of search results depends on the searcher's ability to use that technology effectively. In an effort to improve this ability, our research investigates the effects of logic training, interface training, and the type of search interface on the search process. In a study with 145 participants, we found that even limited training in basic Boolean logic improved performance with a simple search interface. Surprisingly, for users of an interface that assisted them in forming syntactically correct Boolean queries, performance was negatively affected by logic training and unaffected by interface training. Use of the assisted interface itself, however, resulted in strong improvements in performance over use of the simple interface. In addition to being useful for search engine providers, these findings are important for all companies that rely heavily on search for critical aspects of their operations, in that they demonstrate simple means by which the search experience can be improved for their employees and customers.

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Abstract

The presentation of search results on the web has been dominated by the textual form of document representation. On the other hand, the document's visual aspects such as the layout, colour scheme, or presence of images have been studied in a limited context with regard to their effectiveness of search result presentation. This article presents a comparative evaluation of textual and visual forms of document representation as additional components of document surrogates. A total of 24 people were recruited for our task-based user study. The experimental results suggest that an increased level of document representation available in the search results can facilitate users' interaction with a search interface. The results also suggest that the two forms of additional representations are likely beneficial to users' information searching process in different contexts.

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Abstract

This article explores the effects of undergraduate students' mental models of the Web on their online searching behavior. Forty-four undergraduate students, mainly freshmen and sophomores, participated in the study. Subjects' mental models of the Web were treated as equally good styles and operationalized as drawings of their perceptions about the Web. Four types of mental models of the Web were identified based on the drawings and the associated descriptions: technical view, functional view, process view, and connection view. In the study, subjects were required to finish two search tasks. Searching behavior was measured from four aspects: navigation and performance, subjects' feelings about tasks and their own performances, query construction, and search patterns. The four mental model groups showed different navigation and querying behaviors, but the differences were not significant. Subjects' satisfaction with their own performances was found to be significantly correlated with the time to complete the task. The results also showed that the familiarity of the task to subjects had a major effect on their ways to start interaction, query construction, and search patterns.

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Abstract

Purpose - The study aims to examines two aspects of information seeking behaviour of physicists and astronomers including methods applied for keeping up-to-date and methods used for finding articles. The relationship between academic status and research field of users with their information seeking behaviour was investigated. Design/methodology/approach - Data were gathered using a questionnaire survey of PhD students and staff of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at University College London; 114 people (47.1 per cent response rate) participated in the survey. Findings - The study reveals differences among subfields of physics and astronomy in terms of information-seeking behaviour, highlights the need for and the value of looking at narrower subject communities within disciplines for a deeper understanding of the information behaviour of scientists. Originality/value - The study is the first to deeply investigate intradisciplinary dissimilarities of information-seeking behaviour of scientists in a discipline. It is also an up-to-date account of information seeking behaviour of physicists and astronomers.