12 Information Seeking Behaviour: What, Why and How

Prof. Lalitha Aswath

1. Introduction:

The concept of ‘Information’ can be used in many ways, when used as process-it is an act of communication, as an entity/an object- it is a source of imparting /educating and, as Knowledge- an integrating process, it may either enhance uncertainty or reduce uncertainty (Buckland, 1991).  Information could be anything that changes the knowledge of the person both at the personal level and at the systemic level (Belkin, 1978). Information is a vital and critical resource that contributes to the development of an individual in particular and institutional, nation/society in general. It provides the basis for development of Knowledge, leads to innovations, creates informed citizenry and as a result progress of human society (Wasserman, 1991).

Information seeking is an activity that leads to acquisition of information, both personal and in technical contexts. Every day people engage in some activity that might call for information seeking, though may not think of it consciously at the beginning of it. From the moment of birth, humans are prompted and motivated by environment to seek information that may help them to meet their needs. It is generally agreed that a person’s information seeking depends on his or her tasks and the problems encountered in performing them. As most people play a variety of social roles (at home including partners, parents etc.,) and official roles (creators, consumers, mediators and professionals etc.), many writers on the issue of information needs suggest that it is a basic human need, like food, shelter, security, or companionship. Information needs are said to change constantly with new, relevant sensory inputs. In other words, new questions emerge as old ones are answered or even partially satisfied (Case, Atkin). Political, Economic, Social, Cultural and other factors that grossly influence for constant changes in the society contributes for the emergence of new questions, resulting in furtherance of information seeking.

Information seeking is a behavioral trait that an individual is engaged to look out for different kinds of information sources and channels of information. The pattern of information seeking is determined by kind of information based tasks, activities, work roles an individual is expected to perform. Information seeking may be passive reception too, for instance watching a TV advertisement does not presuppose any intension to act on the information delivered instantaneously.

3. Meaning of the terms:

   3.1 Information: An understanding of a concept in general conversation, reading, watching… etc. ‘Today there is a musical concert in the Jnanajyothi auditorium’- general conversation, ‘salary of the state government employees has been revised’- news paper reading and ‘heavy snow fall in J&K’- television news watch.

Information could be an understanding gained by experience, study or communication sent or received that changes the knowledge store of individual.

3.2 Information seeking: A conscious human effort towards understanding a particular issue or a phenomena or an object. May be a process in which humans purposefully engage themselves in updating their knowledge. It may be a conscious effort to acquire information in response to a need or gap in one’s knowledge (Gari, 1995).

3.3 Information Need: It is cognitive perception of an individual and cannot be directly accessible to an observer. The experience of the need can be discovered by deduction from behavior or through the reports of the person in need of information (Wilson, T.D, 1981).

3.4 Information Use: Information use is observed from two angles. One is from the purpose on which information being created and another from the point of view of how it is being used by the user and for what purpose.

3.5 Information Behavior: It encompasses information seeking as well as the totality of other un-intentional or passive behavior or purposive behavior that does not involve seeking such as avoiding information (Wilson, T.D, 1999).

4. What is Information seeking behavior?

Information seeking behavior refers to the way people search for and utilize information. Information seeking is a topic that has been addressed in a number of documents covering several disciplines. It may be due to the fact that everything to do with humans is potentially relevant to this area. Wilson described information behavior as the totality of human behavior in relation to sources and channels of information, including both active and passive information-seeking, and information use. He described information seeking behavior is a purposive seeking of information as a consequence of a need to satisfy some goal. Information seeking behavior is the micro-level behavior employed by the searcher in interacting with information systems of all kinds, be it between the seeker and the system, or the pure method of creating and following up on a search.

Information seeking takes place when a person has knowledge stored in long term memory that precipitates an interest in related area of information as well as the motivation to acquire it. It can also take place when a person recognizes a gap in his knowledge that may motivate him to acquire new information.

Information Seeking is a behavior so common that it is generally not taken seriously until it is circumstantially converted as an essential object of concern. If a person is making a major decision (e.g., buying a house/car) or finishing a task by a deadline (e.g., writing a report), that is an earnest information seeking mode conditioned by the situation: leads to talking to others, searching the Web, reading magazines, watching the news, and so on. It is usually done to satisfy the desire for input of information, until either the need is satisfied or one runs out of time. More commonly the demand for ‘information’ is usually continuous, diverse and elastic.

After the need is met, need perception returns to a more passive state of information seeking. Imagine the case in which the acquisition of information does not concern an immediate task like buying a house/car or writing a report. Routine human life is peppered with instances in which people become interested in learning more about a particular topic or issue after accidentally encountering a bit of information about it. This sort of curiosity, unmotivated by an immediate necessity, is a common aspect of human life.

The situations described above, no matter how familiar to all, are more complex than they appear to eye. Information seeking behavior often poses challenge for generalization. It is difficult to generalize behavior as a pattern due to unpredictability of people, situations, and objects of interest, because they are deeply ingrained in the circumstantial forces which manifest in the human behavior.

4.1: Types of information need.

The basic idea behind information-seeking behavior is the nature of information need. It is a desire/ experience (subjective) that occurs in the mind of a person, who is in need of –but not accessible directly to an observer.

However, various types of needs have been identified through a process of deduction. Morgan and King (1971) have proposed three kinds of motives;

1. Physiological motives – food, water shelter etc.
2. Social motives – curiosity, values and
3. Un-learned motives – status, aggression, affiliation etc.

Weights et al (1993) have suggested the following categories of information needs based on the cognitive approach;

1. Need of new information – to understand
2. Need of information to elucidate information held – values and beliefs and
3. Need of information – to confirm information held.

Further, many research studies have come up with a variety of categorizations of information needs – like perceived needs, actual needs or idealized needs, continuous needs, irregular needs, expressed/articulated needs, unexpressed needs, felt needs, unfelt needs etc.

4.2 Types of Information behavior.

Research in this area is resulted in identification of different types of information behavior. Nicolaisen (2009) has identified and described four different types of Information seeking Behaviors –Visceral, Conscious, formalized and compromised behavior. Visceral is cognitive or in an idea level (Not expressed), Conscious is recognized need, formalized is articulated need and compromised is actual question in relation to a source. Information behavior studies in electronic environment have resulted in identification of six different characteristics of information behavior-horizontal, navigational, viewers, squirreling, checking information, diverse information seekers (JISC). Horizontal is referred to as skimming or reading, navigational is finding ways to reach the required information like e-book and e-journal sites searching, squirreling unfocussed down loading of information, checking information seekers evaluate the information source before using it and diverse information seekers do not belong to any one of the above categories.

5. How to understand Information Seeking Behavior?

5.1: Information Behavior in retrospect.

From the beginning of Librarianship, librarians are concerned and committed to serve the users of libraries. In 1876 Samuel Green said ‘mingle freely with library users to help them in every way’. Later, S.R. Ranganathan (1931) pronounced in his five laws of library science emphasizing the significance of user orientation in library services.

The origins of information seeking behavior are found in the works on the users of libraries and in readership studies in general. The post-war environment has seen increase in the production of scientific literature (either newly published or later released from war-time restrictions) led to the Royal Society Scientific Information Conference, in 1948, which marks the beginning of the modern study of human information seeking behavior. Many conferences on Scientific information in late1940’s and 1950’s resulted in the emergence of an euphoria in librarianship which later led to a substantial amount of money being invested during the 1950’s and 1960’s in research to understand that how scientists gathered and used information in their research work. In late 1960’s and early 1970’s this kind research got integrated and began to be taught in library science course programs in North America (Bates, 2010) In the beginning, the studies on information behavior were called ‘Use studies’(Davis and Bailey, 1964), studies of ‘information seeking and gathering’ or studies of ‘information needs and uses’(Menzel, 1966). Gradually, the term Information seeking behavior research incorporated in itself all types of research on users’ interaction with and usage of information.

The term ‘information behavior’ was conceived in the late 1990s, but it traces its roots to the earlier concept of ‘information needs and uses’ that emerged in the 1960s. At the end of 1970’s and in the beginning of 1980’s researchers’ concerned with this theme began to realize that questions in information needs, seeking and use couldn’t be seen only from the systems point of view. The user of the information and his/her needs came into focus and research in cognitive science was applied and integrated into the user studies. It is pertinent to note that there has been a gradual shift in the focus of information behavior research from system orientation to user orientation. Later, the subject further widened with introduction of models of information seeking (Wilson, 2000). As a result of information need and seeking behavior research, different models were proposed for

Wilson’s information behavior model

And, Kuhlthau (1991) studied as how students searched for information as part of their writing process. She proposed a model that consisted of seven stages. The stages of Kuhlthau’s model are: a) Initiation b) Selection c) Exploration d) Formulation e) Collection f) Presentation and g) Assessment.

a) Initiation: A person’s realization of lack of understanding or knowledge and/ or general feelings of uncertainty, apprehension etc., leads to initiation.

b) Selection: When a problem is identified and initial uncertainty is realized, it gives rise to a sense of readiness to begin the search.

c) Exploration: When people develop doubt, confusion, uncertainty in information, proceed themselves in the process of exploration-leads to confidence.

d) Formulation: When a focused perspective is formed which certainly reduces uncertainty confidence begins to increase.

e) Collection: when required relevant information to the focused perspective is gathered and uncertainty reduced, interest and involvement deepens.

f) Presentation: when search is completed with an understanding, enabling a person to use the understanding/learning for a purpose.

Kulthau’s 2004 model of information search process –

Over the decades through extensive research inside and outside Library environment, what was the interest of a relatively few people got progressively expanded and doctoral students flocked to the area of ISB research in all walks of human endeavor with information. Large amount of research has been carried out in the field of health sciences, may be due to heavy funding.

6. Why should one (Need to) understand Information seeking behavior?

Understanding information seeking behaviors is closely related to decision-making, relevance, pertinence, salience, selective exposure, browsing, serendipity, knowledge gaps, information poverty, information overload, information anxiety, and entertainment. A great deal of the information seeking literature indeed refers to decision making and problem solving.

Although they are not universal aspects of information seeking, solving problems and making decisions and judgments are undoubtedly important in life. The work of managers, scientists, engineers, lawyers—the work that steers the course of society and its economic and governmental organizations—is largely work of making decisions and solving problems.

‘Decisions’ are typically characterized as choices made from among alternatives; that is, at least two options are available, and the decision-maker may select only one of them. Faced with such a situation, the decision-maker must gather information that allows each potential choice to be evaluated and compared to the alternative(s). A typical example of such decision making is the car-buying in which a consumer gathers information to make a purchase decision. Whether the decisions are purchases or other kinds of choices, they can be looked at as comparisons of alternatives (e.g., a particular model of car; an information source) across their attributes (e.g., price; accessibility etc).

Uncertainty is a key concept in decision making research, as it has been the core of Information seeking. It is usually assumed that, whether a person is reading or conversing, he/she is at least partially engaged in an attempt to reduce uncertainty. Decision making research also assumes uncertainty reduction as a key issue, even though it cannot be assumed that possessing more information always reduces uncertainty.

A frequent concern in decision making research is the degree to which the rationality is taken care of. It is obvious that there are limits to both the attention and the ability to process information. Much psychological research on decision making focuses on examining the rules that people use to make choices. For example, in applying the lexicographic rule, a person would decide which attribute is most important (say, a car’s fuel economy) and choose an alternative only on that basis; and in the event of a ‘tie’, they would consider the next most important attribute to resolve their choice.

There is always a distinction between problem solving and decision making, problem solving has to do with identifying issues worthy of attention, setting goals, and designing suitable courses of action.

In contrast, decision making is the activity of evaluating and choosing among alternative actions in response to a problem. Together, the two activities form a sequence that begins with focusing on a problem and ends with selecting from among various choices.

Decision making is a separate and narrower activity than problem solving, emphasis is on the search for alternatives and the choice of which to pay attention to are the key components of decision making.

It is assumed that information seeking is always motivated by a need to solve a problem. But many a times it is proved contrary that problem solving does not fit all situations in which humans are on information endeavor.

Most discussions on information processing have been concerned with the realization of absolute goals. ‘Problem solving’ has become the paradigm of information processing. The problems are considered to have a fixed solution; the goal of the information-processing device is only to find the solution; and at the end efficiency consists in finding a solution at the minimal cost.

In other words, information seeking behavior is not always motivated by the need to solve a problem or make a decision that have a clear-cut and short-term end. Sometimes it is a desire simply to have more or less of some quality of information, more information for stimulation or assurance or for self assuring of less uncertainty, boredom, overload, or anxiety. Information research actually studies and largely limits itself to information related behavior (Davis).

6.1. Information Behavior Research in an Electronic environment:

An ocean of change has been seen in last quarter of 20th century and early part of 21st century in LIS due to the impact of Information technology. Information behavior studies are no exception to this. Modern technology has changed the information seeking behavior drastically. Electronic information resources have played a significant role in Information seeking pursuits. Research in this field has shown that eight different types of internet information technologies – web, data bases, e-journals, e-mails, listserv, portals and FTP, that have been used by scientists in different fields (Bates, 2010).

7. When, Where and Why of Information Behavior Studies?

Information behavior has been studied in many different contexts, with a variety of people and a broad array of motives and goals. All people seek information, but for some people and in some situations the stakes are much higher. Higher stakes are more likely to create situations that attract research.

At one end are trivial decisions affecting few people, whereas at the other end are important decisions that may affect millions of human lives. Now, one could argue that it is anthropocentric to use humans as the sole benchmark for judging the importance of a decision. One could easily imagine real-world problems that involve other sentient beings (e.g., animals) or non sentient things (e.g., tropical, rain, forests). If one thinks through the implications of such problems, one may eventually notice that the judgment is based on their importance by their ultimate impact on the feelings or well-being of humans. So while, recognizing the real-world objects as benchmarks, for the purposes of this discussion one may consider ‘number of people affected’ as a simple indicator of importance.

First, imagine a person trying to choose between different models of a car that vary by features and price; although there are many publications (both printed and electronic) that offer just such information, the outcome of this search is simply not consequential. Presumably this situation would fall near the ‘unimportant’ end of hypothetical continuum because it is likely to affect only one consumer.

Second, consider a citizen about to go to the polls, choosing among candidates based on information about their positions and past performance; electing public representatives is certainly an important decision, and yet this is just one Information Behavior: This situation is more important than the first, but less crucial than others. Third, imagine a biomedical scientist, with years of training and experience, working in an expensive laboratory, developing treatments for heart disease. This scientist must keep abreast of what other researchers are doing in the field, what discoveries have been made, what new equipments and techniques are available, and so on. For instance, to be more realistic, one could identify just one such need, such as the answer to the question ‘What are the effects of dietary fish oil on measures of serum cholesterol? Surely the information needs of this person are important, as judged by the investment, society has made on the scientist and the potential outcome of the work. The scientist’s decisions about which research to follow, could affect millions of people around the globe.

Working on these hypothetical situations and judging their importance is a precursor to an explanation of why substantial research has been conducted on some kinds of information seeking and not on other types. It may be agreed that the case of a scientist who is working on treatments for heart disease that might affect millions of lives is worthy of study. By studying the information needs of such scientist and how information professionals go about satisfying those needs, which might help to devise a tool or service that would help them reach their research goals a little sooner. In such situations, the potential for public good (and for private profit) is enormous. There is an entire industry, commonly called market research, which investigates and purchase decisions: Individual purchases are relatively trivial, yet millions of them add up to significant amounts of money.

One can see a similar logic operating in studies on voting: how a particular individual finds out about issues and candidates may not seem important, but the information-gathering habits of millions of voters may have a crucial impact on a society as a whole. Therefore, there is a sizable literature on political communication, and more specifically on what kinds of information people glean from the mass media. Listening, watching, reading, and learning that takes place in support of buying and voting—and many more daily tasks—are sometimes referred to as ‘everyday’ information seeking.

8. Summary:

People, who are in the process of information search / information behavior, experience interplay of ideas, thoughts, feelings and actions. Information behavior research started from a much simplistic which eventually grew much deeper and less simplistic understanding of human interaction with information. User study, use study, information need study, information seeking behavior study, information behavior etc., are different expressions closely or synonymously related but not precisely defined. User/use of information is the most vital component which will have a bearing on all aspects of understanding of information system. Selection and reception of information depends upon the individual perception of need.

9. References.

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