Although dominant effects of tasks on individuals' information-seeking behavior is accepted by many scholars, a limited number of studies has been conducted to reveal the nature of the relationship between tasks and information-seeking behavior. In their studies, some earlier researchers categorized tasks according to their complexity while others did the same according to the specifications of tasks. Two of the groundbreaking researchers in this area are Katriina Byström and Kalervo Järvelin who contributed to the understanding of the relationship between task complexity and information-seeking behavior. However, their findings also need empirical support for theory growth. In response to this need, this study attempts to test Byström and Järvelin's findings through a research using different research methods and applied in a police work environment. Other than providing empirical support for theory growth, this research is also expected to contribute to the understudied area of police information-seeking behavior. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected from the participants who came from traffic, homicide, and anti-terrorism divisions of Ankara, Eskisehir, and Kirikkale Police Departments in Turkey. The participants identified terrorism cases as the most complex cases to solve, followed by homicide and traffic accident cases. Differences in the information-seeking behavior of three groups of police officers were examined through qualitative and quantitative data analysis. Oneway ANOVA technique and post hoc comparisons were used to analyze the quantitative data. In addition to shedding light on information-seeking behavior of police officers investigating related cases in Turkey, the results provided support for Byström and Järvelin's findings. For instance, the officers investigating more complex tasks used significantly more information sources than the others, while the use of external information sources was significantly higher in more complex cases.

Health officials estimate that the 2014 Ebola crisis disproportionately victimized women, who made up 75% of the disease's victims. This interdisciplinary study has two main goals. The first is to evaluate the news media's performance in relation to their representation of women caught up in the Ebola crisis because the media play an important role in influencing public responses to health. This study sought to understand the information behavior patterns of journalists who covered the Ebola crisis by analyzing how job tasks influence a journalist's information behavior. This study employed qualitative methods to study the perceptions of journalists who covered the 2014 Ebola outbreak. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with Liberian and American journalists who covered the outbreak to understand the choices that guided their reporting of the Ebola crisis. A content analysis of The New York Times, The Times, and The Inquirer was also conducted to examine the new media's representation of women in an outbreak which mostly victimized women. The findings suggest that covering a dangerous assignment like Ebola affected the information behavior patterns of journalists. Audience needs, the timing of coverage, fear, and the accessibility of sources, were some of the factors that influenced the news gathering decisions taken by the reporters. The findings also suggest that women were mostly underrepresented by the media as sources, experts and subjects.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2006. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed September 19 , 2006). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Information seeking and information avoidance are the mechanisms humans natural used for coping with uncertainties and adapting to environmental stressors. Uncertainties are rooted in knowledge gaps. In social sciences, the relationship between knowledge gaps and perceived risk have received little attention. A review of the information science literature suggests that few studies have been devoted to the investigation of the role of this relationship in motivating information-seeking behavior. As an effort to address the lack of theory building in the field of information science, this study attempts to construct a model of information seeking under risk (MISR) by examining the relationships among perceived risk, knowledge gap, fear arousal, risk propensity, personal relevance, and deprivation and interest curiosity as antecedents to motivation to seek information. An experimental approach and a scenario-based survey method are employed to design the study. Partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) analysis was conducted to test the relationships in the proposed model. Perceived risk was found to be a highly significant predictor of information seeking in moderately high-risk situations. Similarly, personal relevant has a significant negative effect on perceived risk and its interaction with knowledge gap motivates information seeking.

No description available.

The design of information systems to support crisis management can be improved when more is known about the ways in which people process information under time pressure. A laboratory experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of time pressure on decision behavior. The decision task required the subjects to use a computerized information display to search for information under time pressure. When the time limit for searching expired, the subjects were required to make a decision. The decision task type, choice or judgment, and three separate information display formats were also manipulated. A total of 144 student subjects were randomly assigned to the resulting six combinations of task/display treatments. Each subject performed the decision task at three levels of time pressure. Dependent measures included information search strategy, decision strategy, decision consistency, and decision quality. Analyses of the results suggest that time pressure had no effect on the information search strategy or the decision strategy. For five of the six task/display groups, time pressure was inversely related to consistency and quality. One group exhibited an inverted U relationship between time pressure and consistency. Display format had an effect on information search strategy. Task type had an effect on both consistency and quality; the performances of the choice groups were superior to those of the judgment groups. The implications of these findings with respect to the design of information systems is discussed.

The aim of this research, Reading Selection as Information Seeking Behavior: A Case Study with Adolescent Girls, was to explore how the experience of reading fiction affects adolescent girls aged 13 through 15, and how that experience changes based upon four activities: journaling, blogging, a personal interview, and a focus group session. Each participant reflects upon works of her own choosing that she had recently read. The data is evaluated using content analysis with the goal of developing a relational analysis tool to be used and tested with future research projects. The goal of this research is to use the insights of the field of bibliotherapy together with the insights of the adolescent girls to provide a higher, more robust model of successful information behavior. That is, relevance is a matter of impact on life rather than just a match of subject heading. This work provides a thick description of a set of real world relevancy judgments. This may serve to illuminate theories and practices for bringing each individual seeker together with appropriate documents. This research offers a new model for relevant information seeking behavior associated with selecting works of essential instructional fiction, as well as a new definition for terminology to describe the results of the therapeutic literary experience. The data from this study, as well as from previous research, suggest that literature (specifically young adult literature) brings the reader to a better understanding of herself and the world around her.

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to investigate the information seeking behaviour of graduate students at Uppsala University, Sweden. Using a qualitative method I gain deeper knowledge of the students’ information behaviour. Method – I interview four master students concerning their information seeking. Two of the students are from the social sciences and two from the medical sciences. Findings – The findings show that students primarily use electronic information resources. The students prefer to access scientific articles electronically, and they rarely use printed books in their studies. The students prefer to use library databases over Google Scholar. The reason for this is not only the access to material, but also that they prefer the more advanced search options provided by the library. Further results show that the students tend to avoid interaction with librarians. Paper type – Two years master’s thesis in Archive, Library and Museum studies.

Curiosity drives many of our daily pursuits and interactions; yet, we know surprisingly little about how it works. Here, I harness an idea implied in many conceptualizations of curiosity – that information has value in and of itself. Reframing curiosity as the motivation to obtain reward – where the reward is information – allows me to leverage major advances in theoretical and computational mechanisms of reward-motivated learning. Using willingness to wait, an established measure of reward-motivated behavior, I test the reward value of information, finding that people are more willing to wait for information about which they’re more curious. I then provide new evidence supporting several predictions that emerge from this information-as-reward framework. In Chapter 1, I examine whether the valence of information affects its reward value, finding an asymmetric effect of positive vs. negative information, with positive valence associated with both enhanced curiosity and enhanced long-term memory for information. I then test an idea drawn from computational and neurobiological accounts of reward learning, which suggest that it is not the absolute value of information that drives learning, but, rather, the gap between the reward expected and the reward received. By asking people to rate both their curiosity about a question and their satisfaction with the answer, I obtain measures of the values of the reward expected (curiosity) and the reward received (satisfaction) and find that the discrepancy between the two – the information prediction error – facilitates learning. These findings suggest a conceptual correspondence between dopaminergic mechanisms of reward learning and curiosity. Aging is associated with decrements in dopaminergic functioning, but it is unclear whether these deficits extend to curiosity, as few behavioral investigations of curiosity and aging exist. In Chapter 2, I, therefore, sought to explore the effects of aging on curiosity, providing behavioral evidence that curiosity is not diminished in aging, but, rather, that it is enhanced. These findings also revealed that older adults are more likely to wait for more positive information, consistent with existing theories of emotional processing. In Chapter 3, I sought to test whether the dopaminergic reward system, particularly the striatum, plays a necessary and causal role in curiosity by examining curiosity in patients with Parkinson’s disease, a neurological disorder characterized by dopamine depletion in the striatum and striatal dysfunction. I provide evidence for diminished curiosity in people with Parkinson’s disease, relative to age- and education-matched controls. In particular, I find that participants with Parkinson’s disease are less likely to wait for lower-value rewards, i.e., information about which they’re less curious. Taken together, these results support the idea that information functions as a reward – much like money or food – guiding choices and driving learning in systematic ways.

The Internet has revolutionized the way in which people are entertained, communicate and collect information. As people increase their ability to connect with the outside world from inside their homes, they hold the power to become their own gatekeepers filtering information as they see fit. Many question whether this will weaken the power of the traditional media sources that are often seen as elitist and potentially biased. This researcher hypothesized that people who cite high credibility ratings of news media channels are more likely to use traditional media channels such as television and newspapers and people who cite low credibility ratings of news media channels are more likely to use alternate media channels such as the Internet. While the researcher was unable to reject the null hypothesis, a pattern of general mistrust of traditional news media was revealed when nearly three-fourths of respondents gave traditional media channels a "not-credible" rating. / by Katrina Herring. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2010. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2010. Mode of access: World Wide Web.