Thesis (Ph.D.)--UCLA, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 260-273).

This study examined the information – seeking behaviour of members of the economically disadvantaged community of Amsterdam. The study involved both a qualitative and quantitative investigation of the critical factors that affected information – seeking, need, and use in the Amsterdam community. The research design included a study of various information behaviour models with particular emphasis on Wilson’s 1996 general model of information – seeking behaviour. The three factors identified by Wilson for the study of various groups’ information behaviour were personality, work – related or work – role and environmental factors. Information science researchers, in the study of rural communities’ information behaviour, have used these three factors extensively. The data collection was triangulated with the use of survey, observations, and focus group discussions and in – depth interviews. The findings show how the person, in the context of information – seeking and the role-played within a given environment, could determine information needs and use. A person in the context of information – seeking, could be a father, a mother, a group leader, a nurse or a teacher. The main elements are the situation within which a need for information arises, and the person performing a role in an environment situated within the context of information – seeking. Information was found to be a critical commodity for the socio – economic, political, and educational development of any given community. Recommendations were made that could transform the community of Amsterdam, through the provision of sustainable information.

In these essays, I study how multidimensional private information causes advantageous selection in a highly concentrated consumer credit market. All three chapters are tightly correlated with each other. I first carefully investigate conditional correlations between choices of a loan type, private default risks, and an additional private information on consumption smoothing motives. I find that their conditional correlations appear consistent with advantageous selection being driven by unobserved heterogeneity in consumption smoothing motives. Then I document how moral hazard links two dimensions of private information: consumption smoothing motives and default risks. By separately identifying moral hazard from adverse selection, I show that consumers with stronger consumption smoothing motives exert more effort to prevent default, generating an endogenous negative association between consumption smoothing motives and default risks. Finally, using a dynamic model of loan type choices and following outcome of default, I recover the joint distribution of bi-dimensional unobserved heterogeneity. This structural estimation also suggests a new way to estimate the inter-temporal elasticity of substitution that represents heterogeneous consumption smoothing motives. As well as being consistent with the results of previous chapters, the results of the structural estimation reveal a strong and positive correlation between inter-temporal elasticity of substitution and default risks.

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This research is possibly the first study investigating the impact of cognitive biases on information searching and decision making. Set in the context of making health-related decisions, this research tests the hypotheses that (i) people experience cognitive biases during information searching; (ii) cognitive biases can be corrected during information searching; and (iii) correcting for biases during information searching improves decision making. Using a retrospective data analysis, a Bayesian model and a series of prospective empirical experiments, the cognitive biases investigated are anchoring effect, order effects, exposure effect and reinforcement effect. People may experience anchoring effect, exposure effect and order effects while searching for information. A person???s prior belief (anchoring effect) has a significant impact on decision outcome (P &lt 0.001). Documents accessed at different positions in a search journey (order effects) and documents processed for different lengths of time (exposure effect) have different degrees of influence on decision making (order: P = 0.026; exposure: P = 0.0081). To remedy the impact of cognitive biases, a series of interventions were designed and trialled to test for their ability to modify the impact of biases during search. A search engine interface was modified to allow for a document-level intervention, which attempts to debias order effects, exposure effect and reinforcement effect; a decision-focussed intervention for debiasing the anchoring effect; and an education-based intervention to inform users about the biases investigated in this research. Evaluation of these alterations to the search interface showed that some of the interventions can reduce or exacerbate cognitive biases during search. Order effects are no longer apparent amongst subjects using a keep document tool (i.e. order debiasing intervention) (P = 0.34); however, it is not associated with any significant improvement in decision accuracy (P = 0.23). Although the anchoring effect remains robust amongst subjects using a for/against document tool (i.e. anchor debiasing intervention) (P &lt 0.001), the intervention is marginally associated with a 10.3% increased proportion of subjects who answered incorrectly pre-search to answer correctly post-search (P = 0.10). Overall, this research concludes with evidence that using a debiasing intervention can alter search behaviour and influence the accuracy and confidence in decision making.

Thesis (M.A.) -- Mills College, 2006. / Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Computer Science.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Texas, May, 2009. / Title from title page display. Includes bibliographical references.

This qualitative phenomenological study is one of few that investigate the information-seeking behaviour of younger elementary school children. Recent cognitive research has established that there are considerable and rapid intellectual changes throughout childhood, meaning that studies and/or models outlining the information-seeking experiences of older students and adults might not identify, explain or address the unique information needs of younger elementary school students. The study, conducted over 14 weeks in Winter 2006 with 12 volunteer students from two grade-three classes within a Montreal elementary school sought to answer three research questions: 1) How do grade-three students seek information in support of a class project? 2) What are the barriers faced by grade-three students in seeking and using information? 3) Do any models of information-seeking behaviour in whole or in part inform a model specific to grade-three students? Six different types of data collection techniques were employed: participant observation, interviews with the students, class teacher and parents, questionnaires, self-evaluations, journals, and final projects. The study revealed that students in the earlier grades of elementary school are seeking and using information in both print and digital formats and experiencing difficulties in both media. In print, selection of materials was not straightforward nor was the location of information within them. Difficulties were encountered with the selection criteria and the use of metadata lists. In the digital domain, lack of strategic planning before starting a search, problems in generating search queries, spelling, keyboarding, and extracting information were observed. In addition to these problems, several barriers outside of the students' control were identified that impact on their information seeking on the Web (e.g. search engine design, lack of appropriate sites for young students, inefficient filtering systems) and in print (e.g. out-of- date and/or lack of print reference resources, classification and/or indexing schemes). Information culled from the Internet was rarely read in any depth on-screen; instead, the students printed the material in order to peruse it at a later time, much as they would with a book. The study provides insight into the barriers faced by children when seeking information, how they use information in an educational context, and how they can be helped to better exploit the information resources available to them, as well as a model of information-seeking behaviour specific to grade-three students.

Metacognitive knowledge is a critical piece of the information literacy puzzle. In a world of exploding information and communications possibilities, the difficulty for users of information systems and services may not lie in finding information but in filtering and integrating it into a cohesive whole. To do this, they must be able to make sense of it, an act that assumes knowledge about one’s own information needs, goals and abilities. This type of self-knowledge - called metacognitive knowledge - has three basic components: knowledge of one’s self, knowledge of the nature of a cognitive task in relation to one’s own cognitive abilities, and knowledge of how and when to effectively use cognitive strategies to complete a cognitive task. Such knowledge, when used in information seeking, may help users to solve complex information problems. There is perhaps no other user group who could benefit more from the development of metacognitive knowledge than adolescents, aged 16 to 18. On the cusp of adulthood, they face many of the complex information problems of adults, but as “novice adults” their depth of knowledge on most topics may be shallow simply because they have only experienced life for a handful of years. This study used naturalistic research methods to investigate the metacognitive knowledge of adolescents as they searched for, selected and used information for a school-based, inquiry project, within the framework of Kuhlthau’s Information Search Process (ISP). It was conducted over a four-month period in a Montreal-area CEGEP (post-secondary educational institutions in Quebec). The participants were students in their first year of CEGEP (equivalent to grade 12). Ten participants, ranging in age from 16 to 18, each kept a written or audio journal in which they recorded their thoughts, feelings, actions, and self-prompting questions, participated in four interviews, three conducted by telephone and one face-to-face, and completed a visualizing ex / La connaissance métacognitive est essentielle à la maîtrise de l’information. Dans un monde où les possibilités en matière d’infonnation et de communication ont explosées, la principale difficulté pour les utilisateurs des systèmes et des services d’information ne consiste pas tant à trouver l’ infonnation qu’à la filtrer et à l’intégrer à un tout cohérent. Pour y arriver, ils doivent être en mesure de la comprendre, ce qui présuppose la connaissance de ses propres besoins, objectifs et habiletés en matière d’information. Ce type de connaissance de soi - appelé connaissance métacognitive - est constitué de trois composantes de base: la connaissance de soi, la connaissance de la nature d’une tâche cognitive en relation avec ses propres habilités cognitives et la connaissance du comment et du quand utiliser efficacement les approches cognitives pour effectuer une tâche cognitive. De telles connaissances utilisées pour rechercher de l’information peuvent aider l’utilisateur à résoudre des problèmes d’information complexes. Le groupe d’utilisateurs à qui le développement de la connaissance métacognitive peut profiter le plus est probablement celui des adolescents de 16 à 18 ans. Sur le point de devenir des adultes, ils sont confrontés à nombre des problèmes d’information complexes des adultes, mais en tant que jeunes adultes, la profondeur de leur connaissance dans la plupart des domaines peut être limitée, leur expérience de la vie ne reposant que sur quelques années. La présente étude a employé les méthodes qualitatives de recherche en milieu naturel pour analyser la connaIssance métacognitive des adolescents pendant qu’ils recherchaient, triaient et utilisaient l’ infonnation pour un projet de recherche scolaire dans le cadre du processus de recherche d’information (Information Search Process (ISP)) de Kuhlthau. L’étude s’est poursuivie sur une période de quatre mois dans un des cé

This research is possibly the first study investigating the impact of cognitive biases on information searching and decision making. Set in the context of making health-related decisions, this research tests the hypotheses that (i) people experience cognitive biases during information searching; (ii) cognitive biases can be corrected during information searching; and (iii) correcting for biases during information searching improves decision making. Using a retrospective data analysis, a Bayesian model and a series of prospective empirical experiments, the cognitive biases investigated are anchoring effect, order effects, exposure effect and reinforcement effect. People may experience anchoring effect, exposure effect and order effects while searching for information. A person???s prior belief (anchoring effect) has a significant impact on decision outcome (P &lt 0.001). Documents accessed at different positions in a search journey (order effects) and documents processed for different lengths of time (exposure effect) have different degrees of influence on decision making (order: P = 0.026; exposure: P = 0.0081). To remedy the impact of cognitive biases, a series of interventions were designed and trialled to test for their ability to modify the impact of biases during search. A search engine interface was modified to allow for a document-level intervention, which attempts to debias order effects, exposure effect and reinforcement effect; a decision-focussed intervention for debiasing the anchoring effect; and an education-based intervention to inform users about the biases investigated in this research. Evaluation of these alterations to the search interface showed that some of the interventions can reduce or exacerbate cognitive biases during search. Order effects are no longer apparent amongst subjects using a keep document tool (i.e. order debiasing intervention) (P = 0.34); however, it is not associated with any significant improvement in decision accuracy (P = 0.23). Although the anchoring effect remains robust amongst subjects using a for/against document tool (i.e. anchor debiasing intervention) (P &lt 0.001), the intervention is marginally associated with a 10.3% increased proportion of subjects who answered incorrectly pre-search to answer correctly post-search (P = 0.10). Overall, this research concludes with evidence that using a debiasing intervention can alter search behaviour and influence the accuracy and confidence in decision making.