Information behavior

Fact-checking behaviors of undergraduate students

Obtaining fact-checking skills is becoming crucial as information disorder turns into a major issue for societies. The aim of this study is to evaluate the extent to which students benefited from the fact-checking module within the news literacy (NL) training and what kind of fact-checking behavior they exhibited. The research was conducted with two different groups of university students for two years using a quasi-experimental design method. Following the training, the students conducted their fact-checking process by making more queries, mainly using news titles, and mostly clicking on news platforms. Although many of the students did not show high performance after the training, it was seen that training created a certain awareness about the verification platforms/tools. The study highlighted the importance of information literacy skills in NL training provided at the university level and the characteristics that distinguish information behaviors during fact-checking from those in other information search processes.

Understanding Information Processing and Protective Behaviors during the Pandemic: A Three-Wave Longitudinal Study

BACKGROUND

Few existing studies have examined information processing as an independent variable to predict subsequent information behaviors in a pandemic context, and the mechanism of subsequent information behavior processing following the initial or prior information behavior is unclear.

OBJECTIVE

Our study aims to apply the risk information seeking and processing model to explain the mechanism of subsequent systematic information processing in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

METHODS

A three-wave longitudinal online national survey was administered during the period of July 2020 to September 2020. Path analysis was conducted to test the relationships between prior and subsequent systematic information processing and protective behaviors.

RESULTS

One important finding was the key role of prior systematic information processing, as indirect hazard experience was found to be a direct predictor of risk perception (β = 0.15, p = 0.004) and an indirect predictor of protective behaviors. Another important finding was the central role of information insufficiency as a mediator/driving force in subsequent systematic information processing and protective behavior.

CONCLUSIONS

The study has made important contributions in that it extends the scholarship on health information behaviors by (a) highlighting that relevant hazard experience in risk information seeking and processing model should be expanded to include indirect experience, and (b) providing the mechanism of subsequent systematic information processing following prior information processing. Our study also provides practical implications on health/risk communication and protective behaviors' promotion in the pandemic context.

Reflexão sobre os termos comportamento informacional e prática informacional

Resumo O artigo, parte da revisão de literatura da pesquisa de pós-doutorado da autora, apresenta, por meio de revisão bibliográfica, a evolução dos estudos de usuários ao comportamento informacional humano. Descreve as principais características das abordagens behaviorista, cognitivista/interacionista e integrativa/multifacetada, vinculadas ao comportamento informacional. Mostra a necessidade de uma reflexão mais aprofundada acerca do uso do termo “comportamento informacional” para “prática informacional”, quando empregados de forma intercambiável, a partir de três pontos de tensão: abrangência da abordagem cognitiva envolvendo a perspectiva social, em que se discute sobre os limites categoriais; críticas ao construcionismo em relação à ideia de que a sua característica principal é o conhecimento construído por interação social e à impossibilidade de atribuir todo desenvolvimento humano à interação humana, e, por fim, mudança da perspectiva cognitiva para uma mais integrativa, que requer ênfase na interação entre os contextos cognitivo, social, cultural, organizacional e afetivo, dentre outros.

Wikipedia: an unexplored resource for understanding consumer health information behaviour in library and information science scholarship

Purpose

To date, health information behaviour (HIB) models have not been applied to an exploration of Wikipedia as a consumer health information resource. Wikipedia has been situated and is well established as a valuable resource for the general layperson wishing to learn more about their health or the health of a loved one. This paper aims to identify an approach to exploring the role of Wikipedia in consumer health information behaviour (CHIB) that is grounded in a conceptual framework from the library and information science (LIS) discipline.

Design/methodology/approach

The author draws on current HIB models and relevant theories from existing LIS literature and applies them to propose a new definition of CHIB. The author uses this definition to frame Wikipedia as an unexplored consumer health information resource in the LIS scholarship and suggests future directions for placing such investigations within a conceptual framework from LIS.

Findings

The paper finds that Longo's expanded conceptual model of health information-seeking behaviour (ECMHISB) could be valuable and useful for the exploration of CHIB in relation to Wikipedia's health and medical content. Due to Wikipedia's online nature, research framed by these models must acknowledge and take under consideration the digital divide phenomenon and various factors that influence an individual's place within it.

Research limitations/implications

This work builds a foundation upon which future research into the role of Wikipedia's health and medical content in CHIB can be grounded. Using Longo's model, future research might provide insight into who Wikipedia is helping and who it has left behind. LIS scholars, practicing health librarians and perhaps health workers stand to gain a deeper understanding of the potential influence of Wikipedia's health information on its consumers.

Originality/value

For LIS scholars, this paper is novel in the fact that a HIB model has not yet been applied to the study of Wikipedia's health content. This paper provides a foundation for this research.

Identifying design guidelines for online information resources: a study of expectant and new mothers

Purpose

The purpose of this article is to identify design guidelines for online resources based on the subjective assessment criteria used by individuals to assess and process information resources. This method of creating design guidelines targeted at precise user groups has the potential to aid designers and developers to create more user-centred information resources.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors gathered data using a prospective longitudinal study investigating the information behaviour of expectant and new mothers. Women were asked to report on their information-seeking activities in a series of semi-structured interviews covering pregnancy and early motherhood.

Findings

This research identified 15 assessment criteria that were utilised by women to assess and process information resources. The most popular resource criteria amongst participants were credibility and convenience, while completeness and relevance were the most popular information content criteria. The authors found that assessment criteria were not considered in isolation, with criteria such as formatting and search engine ranking impacting on participants' perception of other criteria.

Practical implications

This research demonstrates the potential of linking a user groups subjective assessment criterion to design guidelines. The authors propose that these guidelines could be used to help design an online information resource. They could also be used to assess if an existing online resource met the needs of a user group. The methodology used in this study could be leveraged to create design guidelines for user groups.

Originality/value

This research uses subjective assessment criteria as a means of understanding how expectant new mothers process information resources. People use subjective judgements when processing information resources, and this should be incorporated into the design of information resources. Analysing longitudinal data allowed the authors to build a rich picture of how participants evaluated and compared different information resources.

Exploring the topic structure and evolution of associations in information behavior research through co-word analysis

This study aims to reveal the distribution of topics, and the associations among them, in information behavior research from 2009 to 2018. Working with a collection of 6744 publications from the Web of Science database, co-word analysis is used to investigate the overall topic structure, the associations among the topics, and their evolution in different years, which is supplemented by visualization with science maps. The results uncovered an unbalanced distribution of topics, and that the topics cluster into six communities representing subdivisions of this field: information behavior in patient-centered studies; information interaction in the digital environment; information literacy in health and academic contexts; health literacy on the Internet; information behavior in child-centered studies; and information behavior in medical informatics. The findings supplement and provide refinements to work on the state of this field, and help researchers obtain an overview of the past decade to guide their future work.

The most influential researchers in information behaviour

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to identify the top researchers in information behaviour (IB) based on ideational and social influence indicators.

Design/methodology/approach

The population included papers on IB indexed in the Web of Science from 1980 to 2015. UCINET and Bibexcel were the tools used for measuring the ideational and social influence indicators. The correlations among the study variables were measured by applying SPSS and LISREL.

Findings

There was a significant relationship between IB researchers’ productivity and performance, and between ideational influence and social influence. The structural equation modelling showed that a researcher with top placement in his/her co-authorship network can gain higher ideational influence. In total, it seems that the single and traditional criteria are increasingly replacing new and integrative ones in measuring researchers’ scientific influence in fields including IB studies. Results have shown that based on total scores of the studied indicators, Spink, A., Nicholas, D., Ford, N., Huntington, P., Wilson, T.D., and Jamali, H.R. gained the high scores.

Originality/value

The current study used an integrative method based on influence indicators to identify the influential researchers in IB studies. None of the few studies done using bibliometric methods in the realm of IB has investigated the ideational and social influence indicators altogether.

Turning to Peers: Integrating Understanding of the Self, the Condition, and Others' Experiences in Making Sense of Complex Chronic Conditions

People are increasingly involved in the self-management of their own health, including chronic conditions. With technology advances, the choice of self-management practices, tools, and technologies has never been greater. The studies reported here investigated the information seeking practices of two different chronic health populations in their quest to manage their health conditions. Migraine and diabetes patients and clinicians in the UK and the US were interviewed about their information needs and practices, and representative online communities were explored to inform a qualitative study. We found that people with either chronic condition require personally relevant information and use a broad and varied set of practices and tools to make sense of their specific symptoms, triggers, and treatments. Participants sought out different types of information from varied sources about themselves, their medical condition, and their peers’ experiences of the same chronic condition. People with diabetes and migraine expended great effort to validate their personal experiences of their condition and determine whether these experiences were ‘normal’. Based on these findings, we discuss the need for future personal health technologies that support people in engaging in meaningful and personalised data collection, information seeking, and information sharing with peers in flexible ways that enable them to better understand their own condition.

What ICT4D and information management researchers can learn from Paul Otlet’s notion of development

While expansive literature of information-related fields presents Paul Otlet (1868-1944) as one of the founders and prolific writers of information research, it displays a lean coverage of Otlet’s works. Indeed, despite his reflections on information and technology as a conduit of human development, Otlet tends to be caricatured with the concept document and related subjects such as book, library, bibliography, etc. One of the reasons for this shortcoming is that development represents one of the least researched themes of information studies on the one hand and of information and communication technology for development [ICT4D] on the other. It follows that, although integral to human actualization, development is seen as alien to or unfit for information-related fields. Another consequence is that development is taken to mean the development of and access to information technologies. Applying qualitative content analysis, the present paper canvasses Otlet’s works, and features the notion of development. Otlet saw information as a service toward people’s development. For him, people’s development implies the totality and expansion of human life. The paper captures some of the salient themes under which Otlet approached development. The goal is to bring to the forefront of information research, the development, not just of information systems and forums, but also that of people.

Information behaviour and information literacy: The ultimate in transdisciplinary phenomena?

This article investigates transdisciplinarity in relation to information behaviour and information literacy. It demonstrates how these areas are especially suited to transdisciplinarity thought, notes the potential that transdisciplinarity offers in these contexts and presents the key components of transdisciplinarity in two complementary breakdowns designed to help academics and information professionals recognize the value of the concept to their own work. The article considers how transdisciplinarity may be understood in terms of transferable skills, collaboration across different areas, phenomena that affect various disciplines and the use in one field of ideas associated with another. It concludes with reflections on the overall strengths and weaknesses of transdisciplinarity.

Information Literacy and Scholarly Investigation: a British perspective

The phrase, ‘information literacy’, is now well established in library and information science but it is much less familiar to practitioners in other disciplines, even those upon which information literacy impinges. It has yet to gain any significant coverage in education, for example, despite the fact that teaching the basic principles associated with the concept can help learners when undertaking various forms of scholarly work. This paper considers the often overlooked links between information literacy, scientific inquiry and the generic research process, and concludes by advocating that education in schools would benefit from concentrating on the axioms that underpin all three areas. Nonetheless, the author recognizes problems inherent in such a stance. In particular, he notes that activities which may be believed to lead to the acquisition of information literacy are frequently undermined in schools by detrimental attitudes and practices, some of which give priority to other concerns.