Core concepts in information behavior

As defined by Wilson (2000), information behavior is an umbrella concept, covering a range of behaviors associated with the seeking and use of information. Wilson defines information seeking as “the purposive seeking of information as a consequence of a need to satisfy some goal” (p. 49). Information use, therefore “consists of the range of physical and mental acts involved in incorporating the information found into the person’s existing knowledge base” (p. 50). Antecedent to information seeking is an “information need,” which represents a contested area of information behavior. I begin by exploring the concept of an information need.

Information needs

The concept of the information need is of particular relevance to the information pro- fessional, often charged with addressing the need. Taylor (1968), writing in the context of question negotiation in the reference transaction, identified four levels of information need: visceral, conscious, formalized, and compromised. The visceral need, an abstract concept, refers to the actual need of the information user. The conscious and formalized needs refer to semantic representations of the need, in the user’s mind and as expressed in conversation. Finally, compromised needs are needs structured in the context of an information system, where the “searcher must think in terms of the organization of particular files and of the discrete packages available” (Taylor, 1968, p. 277).

Taylor highlights how needs are represented at a number of levels, indicating the possibility of disconnect between a user’s perceived and expressed needs. Krikelas (1983) theorizes the information need as a temporal construct: information needs can be either immediate or deferred (Krikelas, 1983, p. 8). This is a simplistic construction,

but it highlights the complex nature of information needs. At any time, we can define immediate needs; these are needs we can express and act upon. Our deferred, or “kinetic” needs represent a set of information needs that we carry with us at all times, that we subconsciously act upon. Therefore, we are in a continual information need- state, and only a set of our information needs are discrete.

Wilson (1981) offers criticism of the conception of information need, particularly the instrumentation of information needs in user studies. First, Wilson highlights that needs can be operationalized in many forms (wants, demands, etc.), and these forms are context-dependent. Second, needs occur at many levels, including the person level (psychological and cognitive needs, etc.), the role level (social or work role, etc.), or the environmental level (physical or socio-cultural environment, etc.). This inherent complexity makes the study of information needs challenging due to the necessary explication of the context, and level at which needs operate (Wilson, 2000). Response to Wilson’s concerns include the increased contextual and situational focus in information behavior, as evidenced by the turn towards the study of information seeking in context (Vakkari, 1996).

The concept of an information need may be variable, but the important role of information needs as antecedent to a wide range of information behaviors warrants their study. Case (2002) highlights three conceptual approaches to information needs. The first — seeking answers — draws on the previously discussed work of Taylor (1968) and Krikelas (1983), highlighting the representative variability in information needs. To fully comprehend the information need, systems and methods must adapt to the variability of the information need as it passes through representational spaces.

Representing needs and knowledge states

Figure 2.8: Belkin’s anomalous states of knowledge, adapted from Belkin (1980)

of uncertainty reduction allow the location of the information need. In this domain, Belkin’s (1980) theory of anomalous states of knowledge (ASK) describes the process through which representations of information needs are solidified through repeated inquiry. As the information seeker engages in a search process, the “non-specifiability” of the uncertainty is reduced over seeking cycles (Figure 2.8). The concept of an ASK is of particular import to designers of information systems, as technical features such as relevance feedback may assist in reducing the ASK.

In Kuhlthau’s (1993b) process-oriented theory of searching, an information need (uncertainty) initiates the information search process, and is defined as “a cognitive state that commonly causes affective symptoms of anxiety and lack of confidence” (Kuhlthau, 1993b, p. 111). By engaging in the search process, the individual addresses his or her uncertainty, reducing anxiety and increasing confidence (Kuhlthau, 1993a,b). More generally, the concept of uncertainty reduction can be traced to Shannon (1948) and Weaver (1949), whose formulations of information theory highlighted the uncertainty-reducing properties of information (Figure 2.9). Uncertainty reduction as

Figure 2.9: Weaver’s theory of information, adapted from Weaver (1949)

an information strategy has been studied in other disciplines, including communica- tions (Berger and Calabrese, 1975; Sunnafrank, 1986; Brashers, 2001) and social psy- chology (Grieve and Hogg, 1999; Hogg, 2000). Notably, a cross-disciplinary approach to uncertainty reduction has been applied extensively in studies of computer-mediated communication (CMC). Walther and colleagues (1992; 1992; 1994; 1995; 1996) position CMC as fundamentally uncertainty-reducing in nature; the hyperpersonal perspective (Walther, 1996) argues that with uncertainty reduction, ties developed in CMC can have similar strength to offline ties.

Making sense of information needs

Finally, Case (2002) argues that information needs can be thought of as ways to make sense of our world. This perspective is most commonly associated with Brenda Dervin’s (Dervin and Dewdney, 1986; Dervin and Nilan, 1986; Dervin, 1992, 1998, 1999) process theory of “sensemaking” (Figure 2.10). In the sensemaking framework, Dervin terms the information need a “gap”; the gap is contextual, and an individual engages in information seeking behavior to address, or make sense of, the gap.

Figure 2.10: Dervin’s sensemaking, adapted from Dervin (1992)

central concept (“making sense of the world”) is similar, there is variance in imple- mentation between domains. In the HCI community, sensemaking is theorized as a way to develop new understandings from data and representations, such as information visualizations (Furnas and Russell, 2005; Russell et al., 1993). In organizational the- ory, sensemaking refers to the ongoing process of order-making (construction of reality) based on lived experience (Weick, 1993, 1995; Daft and Weick, 2000; Weick, Sutcliffe, and Obstfeld, 2005).

In these various interpretations, the mechanics and actors involved in sensemaking vary (particularly organizational sensemaking), but common threads exist. First, the conception of the gap, a context-dependent information need, is a common thread.

Second, sensemaking is a process in which the actor draws upon available resources to address the gap. Finally, upon addressing the gap, the actor understands the world anew.

Stable and predictable information needs

With the growth of the information-seeking-in-context frame, and resultant turn to- wards naturalistic methodologies, much emphasis has been placed on the subjective nature of information needs. In certain contexts, information needs have a stable or fixed nature. Considering Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, Marchionini (2006) argues that our “higher-level needs are often informational” (p. 42). There are a certain ongo- ing set of needs that must be addressed physically, emotionally, and informationally. For example, the individual experiencing a job loss is beset by a range of new infor- mation needs, including a need for affiliation, energy, orderliness or conjunctivity, ego achievement, and a need for work (or, a sense of purpose) (Payne, 1990, p. 261).

In the transition from high school to college, students are required to adapt to a “new set of academic and social systems” (Terenzini et al., 1994, p. 63), to build supportive friend networks (Paul and Brier, 2001), and to achieve basic orientation with the new locale (Watson, 1993). In the case of both job and college transition, needs are necessarily contextual (a transitioning worker in the engineering field may have different needs than one in the legal field), but needs-in-context are generally stable for a transitional cohort. For this reason, both of these transitions have significant social and informational support infrastructure (e.g. Brand and Burgard, 2008; Jackson et al., 2000; Pancer et al., 2000, 2004; Pratt et al., 2000).

In additional to transitional populations, stable information needs are observed in work settings. Gorman’s (1995) synthesis explored the range of information needs physicians address to maintain occupational stability. Similarly, Hirsh and Dinkelacker

(2004) studied the information needs of information workers, exploring the range of electronic sources consulted to address their needs. Understanding information need as represented in behavior or system allows information researchers to inductively un- derstand information behavior. Cothey’s (2001) longitudinal study of undergraduate information search patterns, for example, utilized transaction logging to measure how information need representations change with system experience. In a situation where the information need is repetitive or cohort-dependent, the automatic recognition of information need provides an opportunity to better serve the needs of information consumers.

Collaborative and integrative approaches to information needs

A collaborative construction of the information need can be seen in Pirolli’s foraging model (Pirolli, 2007, 2009). In this model, information needs are perceived as collec- tive, and information foragers work together to address the information need. This approach is particularly interesting for understanding information needs in a social and collaborative context, such as during the transition to college. In these contexts, infor- mation needs arise and are addressed by groups of actors; foraging theory argues that as group diversity increases, so does the ability to address the information need. By distributing the representation of the need, actors with different understandings of the need can more accurately address the need.

Although the concept of the information need is problematic in instrumentation, there are conceptual similarities in theoretical formulation. A number of integrative models have been put forth, such as Spink and Cole’s (2006) integrative formulation of information behavior, Niedzwiedzka’s (2003) and Godbold’s (2006) general models, and Marchionini’s (2008) human-information interaction approach. Spink and Cole (2006) highlight similarities between the various models, developing a process that

integrates modular thinking, foraging, and metaphor generation to produce an outcome of adaptation and survival. The human-information interaction (Marchionini, 2008) paradigm highlights how new forms of interaction with information — rather than systems — require a process-oriented approach to analysis. It is not enough to study information, people, or technology alone, as our representations of needs are consistently affected by our interactions with ubiquitous digital information.