Information research and the search process

Introduction

Studies in information behavior and information seeking illustrate the numerous activities associated with information search. Although theorists focused on different perspectives of information use (Ellis, 1989; Dervin, 1983; Kuhlthau, 1993; Taylor, 1962; Wilson, 1999), much of the research acknowledged the complexity of users’ information behaviors and especially the social, cognitive, and affective issues that impact it. The literature also contained references to individuals’ use of metacognitive strategies in information search for planning strategies, differentiating among sources, monitoring the process, and evaluating results. Still, studies underscored deficiencies in the user as well as the process that impeded their information-seeking activities. Some of these deficiencies included difficulty in translating the problem to librarians and systems, as well as feelings of uncertainty. Consequently, the authors proposed various methods to enhance individuals’ information seeking, including identifying users’ stage in the information-seeking process and providing relevant support (Kuhlthau, 2004), as well as improving information system design (Dervin, 1992; Ellis, 1989; Taylor, 1962; Kuhlthau, 1999). Unfortunately, none of the authors promoted metacognition strategies to improve individuals’ information searching.

This book proposes a metacognitive-based scaffold to help education graduate students overcome the problems they encounter in information search. The scaffold can be adapted for users in other disciplines and academic stages. Although metacognitive scaffolds are popular instructional tools among educational technologists, report of their use for information literacy instruction remains limited. An analysis of the information search process from the perspective of information behavior, information seeking, and information retrieval theorists supports the use of a metacognitive tool for information search instruction.

Early research

Information need

Taylor (1962) was one of the earliest authors to address users’ information seeking through his exploration of the problems associated with question formation. He identified four levels of information need, including: actual (visceral), conscious, formalized, and compromised. He defined the fourth level, compromised, as the question that was provided to the information system. Taylor maintained that the question was distorted as it moved through the various levels. He also pointed to three obstacles that affected an individual’s interaction with an information system such as the system organization, the type of question and its complexity, and “the state of readiness” (p. 394). The latter, he suggested, referred to the inquirer’s state of mind that he described as constantly changing and this influenced their ability to select the appropriate system message. In his summary, Taylor emphasized the need for additional research for “better design” of information systems and especially to consider the “inquirer” as “an integral part” of the process (p. 396).

Information behavior

Wilson (1981) lamented information science’s focus on Shannon’s (1949) communication model that identified elements such as source, channel, message, coder, decoder, receiver, and noise in users’ information-seeking process. Wilson highlighted the complexity of users’ information needs and information-seeking behavior that he maintained stemmed from interrelationships among the person’s physiological, affective, and cognitive needs, work role, as well as work, social cultural, politico-economic, and physical environments. He argued user studies should consider a “wider, holistic view of the information user” (p. 10), rather than simply how individuals use sources and systems. He hoped the information science field’s shift in focus to the user would result in the improvement of library services for supporting users’ information needs. In 1999 he proposed a model of information seeking that incorporated Kuhlthau’s (1993) notion of uncertainty in users’ information behavior with problem solving. He suggested users’ resolution of the problem as well as their uncertainty occurred in stages and might include a feedback loop. He believed the use of this model offered potential for including Ellis’ (1997) behavioral model that described users’ search activities in the problem-solving process.

Dervin’s methodology, theory, and framework

Dervin (1983, 1992, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013) adopted a construction aspect of information search rather than the traditional transmittal perspective of the process. She sought to offer “alternative approaches to the study of human use of information and information systems” with her sense-making concept (1992, p. 61). She compared the information needs concept from the perspective of an observer and a user. She attributed problems with information-seeking research to its positivistic physical science framework that she maintained affected perceptions about information by focusing on “constant, across time-space patterns in human communication behavior” (1983, para. 14). Dervin argued human information processing stemmed from a relativistic tradition and therefore supported an individual’s information gathering for sense-making. According to the author, sense-making “searches for patterns in how people construct sense rather than for mechanistic in-put out-put relationships” (para. 16).

In the 1970s and 1980s, the study of information seeking began to include user-orientations (Case, 2002; Dalrymple, 2001; Dervin, 1977; Dervin and Nilan, 1986; Taylor, 1962; Zweizig and Dervin, 1977; Wilson, 1997). Dervin’s Sense-Making Methodology (Dervin and Foreman-Wernet, 2003) remains applicable to the study of user orientations in any communicative environment. Library and information science researchers often highlight three aspects of Dervin’s model, including: situations defined as the changing time-space contexts in which users construct sense; gaps (internal and external) that users face as they move through changing situational conditions; and the uses to which users put inputs as they make and unmake sense. In library and information science, gaps are most often defined as information needs.

In her 1992 essay, “From the mind’s eye of the user: the sense-making qualitative-quantitative methodology,” Dervin stated sense-making was a comprehensive approach that contained assumptions, propositions, theory, and methods. She observed sense-making occurred as individuals sought to locate information and resolve the gaps or discontinuities that existed between entities, times, and spaces. She argued how the user conceptualized information was central to the notion of sense-making. In 2003, she pointed out that sense-making, unlike other approaches, focused on the individual as “a theorist involved in developing ideas to guide an understanding of not only her personal world but also collective, historical, and social worlds” (p. 333).

She promoted the application of the sense-making methodology in studying communication such as for interviewing techniques. In 2011 Dervin and Shields stated it had been applied “over a 35 year period to multiple discourse communities” (p. 52). The approach remained especially popular in information science for teaching reference interviewing techniques. She believed the sense-making metaphor supported information seeking, but she pointed out it could illustrate any communication situation (2008). Figure 2.1 outlines the sense-making metaphor that highlights an individual’s efforts at “making and unmaking sense as they navigate with their agencies the structural constraints of their situations” (2013, p. 155).