Investigating failures in information seeking episodes
| Date | 17 July 2017 |
| Published date | 17 July 2017 |
| Pages | 441-459 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-02-2017-0041 |
| Author | Yiwei Wang,Chirag Shah |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management |
Investigating failures in
information seeking episodes
Yiwei Wang and Chirag Shah
School of Communication and Information, Rutgers University,
New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA
Abstract
Purpose –People face barriers and failures in various kinds of information seeking experiences. These are
often attributed to either the information seeker or the system/service they use. The purpose of this paper is to
investigate how and why individuals fail to fulfill their information needs in all contexts and situations.
It addresses the limitations of existing studies in examining the context of the task and information seeker’s
strategy and seeks to gain a holistic understanding of information seeking barriers and failures.
Design/methodology/approach –The primary method used for this investigation is a qualitative survey,
in which 63 participants provided 208 real life examples of failures in information seeking. After analyzing
the survey data, ten semi-structured interviews with another group of participants were conducted to further
examine the survey findings. Data were analyzed using various theoretical frameworks of tasks, strategies,
and barriers.
Findings –A careful examination of aspects of tasks, barriers, and strategies identified from the examples
revealed that a wide range of external and internal factors caused people’s failures. These factors were also
caused or affected by multiple aspects of information seekers’tasks and strategies. People’s information
needs were often too contextual and specific to be fulfilled by the information retrieved. Other barriers, such
as time constraint and institutional restrictions, also intensified the problem.
Originality/value –This paper highlights the importance of considering the information seeking episodes
in which individuals fail to fulfill their needs in a holistic approach by analyzing their tasks, information
needs, strategies, and obstacles. The modified theoretical frameworks and the coding methods used could also
be instrumental for future research.
Keywords Information seeking, Strategies, Barriers, Failures, Information seeking in context, Tasks
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Information seeking is an essential element of individuals’everyday lives. Individuals may
use many different strategies to seek information that accomplishes different goals.
Their queries are generally heterogeneous, though there are areas in which people have
information needs more frequently than others (Savolainen, 1995). Among the factors that
influence people’s information needs and information seeking strategies (ISSs) are task
complexity (Byström and Järvelin, 1995), familiarity with information sources (Savolainen,
1995), temporal factors (Savolainen, 2006), and convenience (Connaway et al., 2011).
While individuals’information seeking behaviors and the factors that influence their
behaviors, such as barriers, have gained considerable attention, people’s experiences of
information seeking failures (hereafter ISFs) and reasons for these failures have been
understudied. Among the limited amount of such studies, most focus on one aspect, tool, or
method of information seeking, such as web searching (e.g. Mansourian and Ford, 2007b).
A careful examination of the link between information seeking barriers and failures is
needed to go beyond current modes and modalities of information access. Specifically, the
contexts in which ISFs arise could be instrumental in designing and implementing new and
better services and systems. The findings presented in this paper are from an exploratory
qualitative study on individuals’ISFs. This study looks for a holistic picture of the instances Aslib Journal of Information
Management
Vol. 69 No. 4, 2017
pp. 441-459
© Emerald PublishingLimited
2050-3806
DOI 10.1108/AJIM-02-2017-0041
Received 7 February 2017
Revised 29 March 2017
Accepted 27 June 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/2050-3806.htm
The authors would like to thank all of the participants and Shawon Sarkar for her assistance with
coding process for some of the analyses reported here. The work reported here is supported in part by
the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) Grant No. LG-81-16-0025-16.
441
Investigating
failures
in which individuals fail to entirely fulfill their information needs in all contexts and
situations, and the reasons for their failures in real life scenarios. The remainder of this
paper is structured as follows. The next section reviews relevant literature regarding
information seeking barriers and failures. This is followed by a description of the data
collection and analysis methods, which involved a survey of 63 people expressing a total
of 208 instances of ISFs, and interviews with ten participants. Results are reported
afterwards, followed by a discussion of findings. This paper ends with a conclusion and a
future research agenda.
2. Literature review
2.1 Information seeking barriers
Research has shown that individuals constantly face barriers and constraints when looking
for information across various disciplines and professions, such as medicine (Kumpulainen
and Järvelin, 2012), education ( Julien, 1999; Seyedarabi, 2011), and computer science and
engineering (Kraaijenbrink, 2007; Dorn et al., 2013), as well as in their everyday lives
(Savolainen, 1995). Researchers have used varying terminology when defining and
classifying barriers. Świgoń(2011b) synthesized the literature to propose a universal
typology of information seeking barriers divided into four groups: barriers connected with
personal characteristics, interpersonal barriers, environmental barriers, and barriers
connected with information resources. Barriers connected with personal characteristics and
interpersonal barriers made up the most frequently encountered problems in the academic
environment (Świgoń, 2011a). Savolainen (2015) categorized barriers into internal barriers,
which originate from inside an individual (e.g. affective and cognitive barriers), and external
barriers, which are imposed on an individual from outside (e.g. temporal and spatial
barriers). For instance, among the external barriers, socio-cultural barriers –like social
stigma and bureaucratic inertia of organizations –hinder, delay, or prevent access to
information, and also cause negative emotional reactions such as frustration and fear
(Savolainen, 2016).
Researchers often tie information seeking barriers to specific populations. In Attfield
and Dowell’s (2003) inquiry of journalists’information seeking, two types of constraints
emerged: product constraints (e.g. deadline, word count) and resource constraints
(e.g. personal contacts, accumulated subject knowledge). These constraints were volatile
due to the uncertain nature of writing for news or feature article, and thus brought
challenges to information seeking. Kraaijenbrink (2007) produced a systematic
categorization of 79 different types of gaps associated with engineers’information
identification, acquisition, and utilization. The study revealed plenty of room for
improvement in web design and the author argued that a website’s functionality –rather
than its appearance –is the key issue. Szymanski and Davis (2015) focused on the wine
industry and uncovered that time constraints usually caused frustrations among wine
makers or growers when they were interacting with information resources. Also,
information might not be specific to their regions, or might be difficult to read, and desired
information could be buried within irrelevant information.
Although barriers are mostly believed to negatively impact information seeking, they do
not always result in unfavorable outcomes. While individuals are sometimes frustrated by
time constraints and too much information, most are not actively prevented from learning
from information resources (Szymanski and Davis, 2015). Moreover, barriers
and uncertainty may also encourage creativity and innovation (Chowdhury et al., 2011),
and contribute to positive consequences, such as developing filtering behavior, which
encourages people to access a few relevant sources rather than time-consuming
comprehensive results (Savolainen, 2015). A close examination of the connections between
information seeking barriers and failures and how people interpret their failures is necessary.
442
AJIM
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