Information Seeking Activities Research Articles

Hubungan Pencarian Informasi Lee Jeno pada Akun Twitter @LeeJeno_IDN dengan Kebutuhan Informasi Followers

Information seeking activities are also usually carried out to meet the needs of each individual and on this activity can be done on social media especially Twitter. Purpose Research. This study aims to find out whether there is a significant correlation between information seeking with the fulfillment information of cognitive needs, affective needs, social integrative needs, and escapist needs of @LeeJeno_IDN’s followers. Methods. This research used correlational quantitative method by using Pearson Correlation. On this population of this research were the followers themselves and got drawn sample with amount 100 using Simple Random Sampling. Result. And the result of this research shown that there is a significant correlation between information seeking with the fulfillment information of cognitive needs, affective needs, social integrative needs, and escapist needs of @LeeJeno_IDN’s followers. Keywords: Information Seeking, Information Needing, Twitter, Social Media, Information

The Influence of Communication Messages on Adoption of Contagious Bovine Pleuropneumonia (CBPP) Vaccine among Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASAL) Pastoralists in Kenya

Purpose: The purpose was to establish influence of communication messages on adoption of Contagious Bovine Pleuropneumonia (CBPP) Vaccine among Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASAL) pastoralists in Kenya. Messages were studied under parameters of inoculation site, benefits, required frequency of vaccination and side effects. The focus on the vaccine messaging was informed by the slow pace of adoption of live T1 vaccines currently being used to eradicate CBPP in Kenya. Diffusion of innovation and social learning theories were used to support the study.
 Methodology: Study population were pastoralists in Narok South Sub County. 468 respondents inclusive of qualitative and quantitative samples where 440 responded to questionnaire, 24 in focus group discussions, and 4 in key informant interviews participated. Multi stage, purposive, simple random, systematic and stratified sampling techniques were then employed to come up with respondents. Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS) version 20.0 was used to analyze data, which was presented using regression coefficients and ANOVA.
 Findings: CBPP messaging influenced respondents to vaccinate although some had more influence than others. Messages on inoculation site, benefits, required frequency of vaccination side effects and communal vaccinations were important for the survival of their cattle and significantly influenced the decisions of respondents to vaccinate against the disease. Moreover, messages helped them to know important information details such as vaccination venues, and costs of vaccination and availability of the veterinary officers. CBPP vaccine messages attributes were key in the success of influencing respondents. However, the messaging ran into already held misinformation by some pastoralists confirming earlier study that vaccination rate was at 20-60% because some skipped the exercise.
 Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: CBPP vaccine messages and attributes significantly influenced CBPP vaccinations decisions among pastoralists. This study validated diffusion of innovation and social learning theories that innovation-decision process is essentially an information seeking and processing activity in which an individual is motivated to reduce uncertainty about the advantages and disadvantages of the innovation. For policy and practice, this study recommends development of communication plans, and packaging of CBPP vaccine messages for dissemination in the ASALs where disease is prevalent. Considering that CBPP is a trans-boundary disease, these plans and messages could be harmonized across ASAL counties to enable consistency and coherence.

Political ideology and differences in seeking COVID-19 information on the internet: examining the comprehensive model of information seeking

PurposeGuided by the Comprehensive Model of Information Seeking (CMIS), this article identifies significant predictors that impact individuals seeking COVID-19 information. People with different political ideologies read contradictory information about the COVID-19 pandemic. However, how political ideology may affect COVID-19 information seeking remains unclear. This study explores the major information channels for individuals with different political ideologies to seek COVID-19 information. It further examines how political ideologies influence CMIS's effectiveness in predicting online health information-seeking.Design/methodology/approachThis study collected 394 completed survey responses from adults living in the United States after the 2020 lockdown. ANOVA analyses revealed the differences in salience, beliefs, information carrier characteristics, utilities and information-seeking actions between Liberals and Conservatives. Regression analyses discovered variables that predict Liberals' and Conservatives' online health information seeking.FindingsResults suggest that the internet is the top channel for COVID-19 information seeking. Compared to Conservatives, Liberals report more COVID-19 information-seeking actions. Liberals also express stronger salience, perceive higher trustworthiness of online COVID-19 information, are more likely to think of seeking online COVID-19 information as useful and helpful and report more substantial efficacy to mitigate the risk. Most CMIS variables predict Liberals' information seeking; however, only salience significantly predicts Conservatives' information seeking.Originality/valueThis article indicates that CMIS should include political ideology to refine its prediction of information seeking. These findings offer practical implications for designing health messages, enhancing information distribution and reducing the public's uncertainty.Peer reviewThe peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-08-2022-0436.

Accessing information during the COVID-19 pandemic era: a study of GCC citizens and noncitizens

Purpose Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a new disease that has led to rapid and dramatic global changes. This study aims to investigate how Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) citizens and noncitizens search for necessary information and assess available information sources, their associated awareness and anxiety levels, voluntary work, compliance with quarantine regulations and technology. Design/methodology/approach An electronic questionnaire was designed using Google Forms and distributed on Twitter and WhatsApp. In total, 1,006 responses were received. Findings The results showed that 75.25% of the participants were active information seekers because of their daily search for necessary information. “Formal sources,” “Social media” and “Television” were the most preferred information sources found by the study sample. Originality/value This study investigates the behavior of GCC citizens and noncitizens in searching for necessary information during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, it draws attention to the importance of digitization and digital preservation in building a specialized digital library for future access to pandemic-related information distributed by the government authorities and institutions in the State of Kuwait.

Perilaku Pencarian Informasi oleh pemustaka di Layanan Sirkulasi Perpustakaan Universitas Sumatera Utara

This study aims to determine information search behavior by users in the service circulation of the University of North Sumatra Library. The method used in this research is descriptive qualitative. The data collection technique used in this research is observation. This study took the subject of the library users as informants and the object of research was information seeking behavior in the circulation of the University of North Sumatra Library. most of the visitors to the library are for the purpose of seeking information, only a small portion is for reading, thus giving rise to several possibilities for library visitors, such as; Some visitors come to the library for the purpose of information, reading and meditation. The information we get actually comes from a process of producing information. This is called information discovery theory, starting with: Initiation, formulation, exploration, formulation, collection, presentation. Human behavior in information sources and channels, including active and passive information seeking and use.
 Keywords: behavior, information search, library circulation

Perilaku Pencarian Informasi oleh pemustaka di Layanan Sirkulasi Perpustakaan Universitas Sumatera Utara

This study aims to determine information search behavior by users in the service circulation of the University of North Sumatra Library. The method used in this research is descriptive qualitative. The data collection technique used in this research is observation. This study took the subject of the library users as informants and the object of research was information seeking behavior in the circulation of the University of North Sumatra Library. most of the visitors to the library are for the purpose of seeking information, only a small portion is for reading, thus giving rise to several possibilities for library visitors, such as; Some visitors come to the library for the purpose of information, reading and meditation. The information we get actually comes from a process of producing information. This is called information discovery theory, starting with: Initiation, formulation, exploration, formulation, collection, presentation. Human behavior in information sources and channels, including active and passive information seeking and use.
 Keywords: behavior, information search, library circulation

Information Seeking: The Case of Academic Staff of Federal College of Education (Technical) Ekiadolor, Benin City

Purpose: The article investigated the information seeking behaviour of academic staff of Federal College of Education (Technical), Ekiadolor, with particular focus on the access tools, information sources and search strategies used. Methodology: Descriptive survey research method was adopted for the study, with an online questionnaire as the research instrument. Findings: The study revealed that academic staff of the Federal College of Education (Technical) are active information seekers, in a bid to meeting their information needs as they relate to their work. They mostly use the internet and the library to access information, consulting journals/periodicals, reference materials, dictionaries and the internet when seeking for information. Recommendation: Academic libraries should be subscribed to e-databases, and staff trained on the usage; academic libraries should be provided with the different types of information sources, staff should be trained on how to use OPAC.

INFORMATION SEEKING IN OLDER ADULT RURAL CANCER SURVIVORS: UNMET NEEDS AND SEARCH EXPERIENCES

Abstract Cancer survivors over the age of sixty-five have specialized supportive care needs related to maintaining their health and quality of life after treatment. However, cancer survivors living in rural areas may experience barriers like limited digital infrastructure and/or low health literacy when attempting to access necessary informational resources. This project sought to identify older adult rural cancer survivors’ domains of unmet informational support and experiences searching for supportive informational resources. Data from a survey administered to cancer survivors (N=292 with complete age data) in rural areas of Western New York (RUCA codes 7-10) were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Variables of interest included Internet access, information-seeking activities, cancer-related topics of interest, and information search experiences. Fifty-four percent of participants in the sample self-identified as over the age of 65. Among older adult cancer survivors, 62% reported using the Internet. The following topics were identified as unmet cancer survivorship information needs: (1) decreasing the risk of cancer recurrence, (2) new symptoms that warrant contacting one’s doctor, and (3) medical advances in treatment. Most older adult respondents (70%) were confident in their ability to find needed health information but 40% were concerned about the quality of the information they found and 31% found their search experience frustrating. While rural cancer survivors have access to digital resources and report confidence in their ability to find survivorship information, our findings highlight the need for tailored information on cancer survivorship and interventions to support information appraisal and selecting high quality informational sources.

Research use and publishing diversity: The role of organisation research publishing for policy and practice

AbstractDigital technologies have enhanced the capacity for organisations across many sectors to produce, publish, and disseminate research in a variety of formats, and a great deal of it is sought and used in public policy and practice‐related research, yet this diversity is often overlooked in studies of research use. While the need for diverse research sources and formats for public policy and practice is increasingly acknowledged, there have been few studies which articulate and categorise what this diversity looks like in practice, and how research is filtered and selected based on genre, source, and other facets. This article reports on a large‐scale online survey and semi‐structured interviews with research users across multiple sectors in Australia on the materials they access and use for policy and practice work. The results indicate that research users are active information seekers who require online access to diverse genres and formats produced by a range of sources and sectors. However, respondents also faced many barriers to research use, including the cost of subscriptions for academic journals, discoverability of reports and data, poor management of publications by organisations including government, and the time required for filtering and evaluation. Based on these findings I argue that policy research requires a far greater variety of genres and sources than is generally recognised with implications for the way research use and the research publishing system is understood and managed in Australia.Points for practitioners Policy research and implementation requires diverse online sources and resources from multiple sectors, including reports, discussion papers, evaluations, and data, produced by organisations (grey literature), as well as journals and books. However, this paper finds there are major barriers to discovery, filtering, and access to diverse research publications for practitioners, resulting in poor productivity and policy outcomes. To improve the use of evidence for policy and practice, we must invest in efficient discovery, access, and management systems for diverse research publications.

Uses and gratifications of a tablet computer for children: an analysis of online customer reviews

PurposeThe number of children using and owning mobile devices has grown significantly in the last decade. By applying a uses and gratifications approach, this paper aims to explore what customers of a tablet computer for children report about the use and expectations of these devices from an information behavior perspective.Design/methodology/approachFor this study, 1,185 online customer reviews published for two different versions of the Amazon Fire Tablet Kids Edition on the German Amazon website between June 16, 2019, and June 15, 2020, were analyzed. A content analysis of the reviews was conducted using different inductive coding methods.FindingsFindings indicate that customers describe different aspects of children's use and families' expectations of tablets within their reviews. The expressed gratifications mostly relate to the aim of entertainment. Intentional information seeking activities were hardly mentioned within the reviews, but many customers emphasize learning as an important activity with the devices. Overall, the customer reviews reveal a mix of gratifications that differ from reported motivations for adults' tablet use.Research limitations/implicationsThe possibility of manipulated online customer reviews must be considered. It should also be viewed critically that the children's perspectives are only indirectly included in the data.Originality/valueFamilies' expectations of tablets as a device for children have not been a focus of research to date. This study uses an innovative research design by applying a uses and gratifications approach to online customer reviews for children's tablets. The findings add to previous research on children's use and families' expectations of tablets and contribute to our understanding of children's information behavior in connection with mobile devices.

SARA Hoax: Phenomena, Meaning, and Conflict Management

The SARA (Ethnic, Religion, Race, and Intergroup) hoax is one of the disquieting hoaxes as it has the potential to cause conflict. Some Indonesians might not know that the SARA information they get is factual or hoaxes, which can lead to prejudice. Conflict in Tanjung Balai and Depok shows that exposure to SARA hoaxes can affect individual behavior. This study aims to describe individual experiences in interacting with SARA information and performing conflict management. This study uses phenomenological methods and in-depth interview instruments, allowing researchers to interact with the world of the informants’ conscious experiences. The results indicate that the informants access various information related to the main activities. The internet has become the preferred media gratification. From the information-seeking activities, some SARA information was found, and some SARA information were hoaxes. SARA hoax has three meanings and has the potential to cause conflict. Hence, informants applied different conflict management styles in dealing with conflicts that arose.

Linkages between stress and stress coping strategies among Nepalese during COVID-19 lockdown: A nationwide cross- sectional study.

AimWith the increase in confirmed cases of COVID-19, the universities and colleges have been shut down posing uncertainty and unpredictability contributing to stress and increased morbidity of mental problems. Students are restricted from regular academic involvement, social interaction and are confined at home to reduce the transmission of the virus which in turn tends to provoke stressors and coping strategies. We aimed to assess the linkage between stress and coping strategies among youth students during COVID-19 lockdown.Subject and methodsWeb-based cross-sectional study was conducted among 2520 university-level students of Nepal. Standard tools like Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) and Stress Coping Resources Inventory (SCRI) were used for collecting information. The final data was analyzed with the help of R-studio (version 1.2.5033). Univariate, bivariate, and multivariate statistics (polytomous logistic regression) were computed to find out the linkages between stress and stress coping strategies.ResultsThe results show that students less than 23 years old, females, and living without parents were found to be more likely to have moderate to high levels of stress. The higher the stress level, the lesser was the possibility of practicing stress coping strategies. Active coping was the most preferred coping strategy while social ease was the least preferred.ConclusionsTo conclude, Active coping was the most preferred coping strategy involving active information seeking, readiness to take charge of the disease-related situation along with the realization that such event is a result of chance while social ease was the least preferred strategy which suggests that the students prefer to seek help from their friends or relatives.

Examining German and American teachers’ perceptions about students’ use of the internet to conduct research

ABSTRACT There is a critical need to understand the factors that influence the development of students’ skills for using the Internet to search for and locate information. Teachers play an important role in this process and there is a related impetus to identify the dynamics of instruction in information-seeking activities. This study investigated German and American middle and secondary school teachers’ perceptions about preparing students to use the Internet as a tool for research. Utilizing theoretical thematic analysis, results indicated teachers from both countries felt specific student attributes contributed to and inhibited processes associated with online information searches. Importantly, there were also similarities and differences in the strategies teachers perceived as necessary for preparing students that were linked to pedagogical and contextually-specific factors. Implications for future investigations include incorporating observations of instruction and collecting teaching artefacts to further identify the pedagogical strategies implemented by teachers from each country.

Farmer identities: facilitating stability and change in agricultural system transitions

ABSTRACT The need for institutional change posed by anthropogenic global warming is now well-recognized, and this is particularly the case for agri-food systems, which are both significant contributors to climate change, and highly vulnerable to its impacts. The importance of identity to institutional change is well-recognized in various areas of scholarship, although in the study of institutional responses to climate change this key driver is less often discussed. In this study, we seek to create space for doing so, by focusing on the identity work of a sample of farmers in Alberta, Canada, as they navigate this moment of sector uncertainty. We show how farmer identities are becoming destabilized as producers attempt to accommodate growing environmental and climatological concerns, with many productivist farmers seeking to deflect sources of identity disconfirmation, while post-productivist farmers engage in active community-building and information seeking to support the formation of a new identity.

The Students’ Ethics, Trust and Information Seeking Pattern During COVID-19 Pandemic

The aim of this study is to examine how ethics influence students’ cognitive and affective-based trust during COVID-19 pandemic and explore their information seeking activity when faced with limitations learning process. The sample consists of 610 participants through a survey study with Structural Equation Modeling to test the research hypotheses. We found both ethics has positive and significant effect to trust (e.g., cognitive- and affective-based trust), which subsequently positively effects on information seeking among students’ toward Facebook as a tool to promote their activities, The recent study’s has contributed to the academic field shows that Facebook is a tool for communication and interaction with others by seeking information, which ethics and trusts an essential exogenous factor. In practical area, education stakeholders’ should address and identify their students’ to improve their learning performance. Also, it should focus on enhancing the contents and processes of its students’ interactions to foster communication and value propositions in creating unique and valuable experiences.

E-health literacy in older adults: an evolutionary concept analysis

BackgroundInternet technologies have become important for older adults to not only seek, understand, and evaluate information on health management but also apply and share acquired knowledge. Despite the disparity in e-health literacy among older adults, which affects health outcomes, its conceptual definition has not been distinctly clarified in previous studies. This study aimed to analyse the concept of e-health literacy among older adults and to identify its contexts in the nursing field.MethodsWe identified concepts, attributes, antecedents, and consequences of e-health literacy in older adults using Rodgers’ evolutionary approach to various fields of study, time, and cultural differences. A literature search was conducted using the National Assembly Library, Research Information Sharing Service, National Digital Science Library, DataBase Periodical Information Academic, PubMed, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, Excerpta Medica database, and Cochrane.ResultsA total of 28 studies were included, and we categorised the following three attributes: active information seeking, two-way interactive communication, and information utilization/sharing. The antecedents included personal factors, health status, socioeconomic factors, cultural factors, and attitudes toward the Internet while the consequences included increased health interest, health behaviour promotion, and active decision-making.ConclusionsAs e-health literacy in older adults affects their health and quality of life, this study clarifies the concept and provides a conceptual framework for nursing practice and research. Further studies are needed to identify and expand the constantly evolving concept of e-health literacy in older adults.

The moderating effect of information channel on the relationship between type of information search and knowledge of genetically modified organisms

ABSTRACT This study explores how the type of information search and information channel can influence the objective knowledge of consumers on genetically modified organisms. We divided the types of information search on genetically modified organisms into active and passive seekers, and then examined how their knowledge differed depending on preferred the information channel (i.e., government, portals, non-government organization (NGO) sites). An online survey was conducted with Korean men and women aged 19 or older. The main and interaction effects of the type of information search, and government, portal, and NGO sites were statistically significant. The results showed that active information seekers who prefer government, portal, and NGO sites have lower scores of knowledge on genetically modified organisms than that of passive information seekers, given the confusion of competing and sometimes inaccurate information sources.

Using social media listening and data mining to understand travellers' perspectives on travel disease risks and vaccine-related attitudes and behaviours.

BackgroundTravellers can access online information to research and plan their expeditions/excursions, and seek travel-related health information. We explored German travellers’ attitude and behaviour toward vaccination, and their travel-related health information seeking activities.MethodsWe used two approaches: web ‘scraping’ of comments on German travel-related sites and an online survey. ‘Scraping’ of travel-related sites was undertaken using keywords/synonyms to identify vaccine- and disease-related posts. The raw unstructured text extracted from online comments was converted to a structured dataset using Natural Language Processing Techniques. Traveller personas were defined using K-means based on the online survey results, with cluster (i.e. persona) descriptions made from the most discriminant features in a distinguished set of observations. The web-scraped profiles were mapped to the personas identified. Travel and vaccine-related behaviours were described for each persona.ResultsWe identified ~2.6 million comments; ~880 k were unique and mentioned ~280 k unique trips by ~65 k unique profiles. Most comments were on destinations in Europe (37%), Africa (21%), Southeast Asia (12%) and the Middle East (11%). Eight personas were identified: ‘middle-class family woman’, ‘young woman travelling with partner’, ‘female globe-trotter’, ‘upper-class active man’, ‘single male traveller’, ‘retired traveller’, ‘young backpacker’, and ‘visiting friends and relatives’. Purpose of travel was leisure in 82–94% of profiles, except the ‘visiting friends and relatives’ persona. Malaria and rabies were the most commented diseases with 12.7 k and 6.6 k comments, respectively. The ‘middle-class family woman’ and the ‘upper-class active man’ personas were the most active in online conversations regarding endemic disease and vaccine-related topics, representing 40% and 19% of comments, respectively. Vaccination rates were 54%–71% across the traveller personas in the online survey. Reasons for vaccination reluctance included perception of low risk to disease exposure (21%), price (14%), fear of side effects (12%) and number of vaccines (11%).ConclusionsThe information collated on German traveller personas and behaviours toward vaccinations should help guide counselling by healthcare professionals.

Gaining access to the unknown: Preschoolers privilege unknown information as the target of their questions about verbs

Children are opportunistic word learners, making passive use of nearly any available cue to link labels and referents. However, children may also actively drive their word learning by inquiring about unknown labels. Until recently, research has largely overlooked active word learning mechanisms. In the current study, two experiments investigated the emergence of preschoolers’ ability to tailor their questions about words and definitions to maximize information gains. Experiment 1 tested whether 3- and 5-year-olds’ frequency of questionasking differed for known and unknown verbs in a referential communication task. Results revealed that 3- and 5-year-olds (N = 36) asked more questions about unknown verbs (M = 3.86) than about known verbs (M = 0.22, p < .001), but this tendency was greater for 5-year-olds (M = 6.11) than for 3-year-olds (M = 1.35, p < .001), suggesting a developmental difference in information-seeking proficiency. Experiment 2 tested whether 3- and 5-year-olds’ frequency of question asking about unknown verbs differed when words were embedded in definitions of high- and low-informative quality. Results demonstrated that 3- and 5-year-olds (N = 42) asked questions about unknown verbs more when provided with uninformative definitions (M = 0.86) compared with informative definitions (M = 0.05, p = .028), suggesting a sensitivity to definition quality that drives preschoolers’ information search for word meanings. These findings offer insight into children’s information seeking during exposure to new words. Results advance the characterization of children’s active verbal information seeking in shaping their word learning.

Toll-based access vs pirate access: a webometric study of academic publishers

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to draw a comparison of the Web traffic ranking, usage and popularity of websites of databases of reputed publishers, namely, ScienceDirect and Emerald Insight, that provide access on subscription basis with Sci-Hub, on the basis of data obtained from Alexa databank (www.alexa.com). Sci-Hub is a website that provides pirated open-access to the research literature, where piracy, according to The Economic Times (2020), refers to the unauthorized duplication of copyrighted content.Design/methodology/approachUnder present study, the quantitative study of the collected data was carried out with help of descriptive research methodology. The Alexa databank was singled out as the source of data. This study crawled through Alexa databank on 01.12.2019 and collected relevant data regarding Sci-Hub, ScienceDirect and Emerald Insight using the search terms Sci-hub.tw, Sciencedirect.com and Emeraldinsight.com sequentially. Different criteria were taken into consideration, which include global traffic rank, the average number of page views per user, time taken for uploading, bounce rate, percentage of users, the number of in-links and daily time spent on the site.FindingsThe results of this study showed that ScienceDirect has the highest traffic rank and in-linking sites among the surveyed databases. But highest number of page visits were recorded for Sci-Hub with fastest downloading speed. It has also been observed that the users spent less time on ScienceDirect and Emerald Insight as compared to Sci-Hub. This study further observed that Sci-Hub has the lowest bounce rate. Users from both the developing and developed economies use the Sci-Hub, though the highest number of visitors belongs to the developing nations.Originality/valueThis study provides an overview of the performance of toll-based publishing databases with pirated database based on different criteria through World Wide Web. Though, this study in no way supports or endorses the unauthorized and illegal access to knowledge, but such data helps in depicting and analyzing how much a particular database is accessed by its users all over the globe and also determines and illustrates the time spent by users while accessing a specific database, thus, providing the user preferences in information seeking activities. This study provides an overall view of adoption of open resources.