Source preference criteria in the context of everyday projects. Relevance judgments made by prospective home buyers
| Published date | 19 January 2010 |
| Pages | 70-92 |
| Date | 19 January 2010 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/00220411011016371 |
| Author | Reijo Savolainen |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Source preference criteria in the
context of everyday projects
Relevance judgments made by prospective
home buyers
Reijo Savolainen
Department of Information Studies and Interactive Media,
University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to elaborate how source preference criteria are defined in the
context of everyday projects that require the seeking of problem-specific information. More
specifically, to find out how information seekers explain their preference criteria by characterizing the
perceived strengths and weaknesses of diverse sources.
Design/methodology/approach – The approach takes the form of qualitative content analysis of
empirical data gathered by semi-structured interviews with 16 prospective home buyers in 2008. The
source preference criteria were elicited by making use of the construct of information source horizon.
Findings – Networked sources were favoured most strongly, followed by printed media, human
sources and organizational sources. Content of information was the primary source preference
criterion. Availability of information was a fairly important criterion, while user characteristics,
usability of information and situational factors were fairly marginal in this regard. In the definition of
the preference criteria, more emphasis was placed on the perceived strengths than weaknesses of
sources. Positive qualities such as “provides updated information” were referred to particularly while
judging the relevance of the networked sources. Negative qualities like “outdated information” were
primarily associated with printed media and organizational sources.
Research limitations/implications – The study is exploratory, drawing on a relatively small
sample recruited through a web-based service. Thus, the findings cannot be generalized to prospective
home buyers.
Practical implications – Prospective home buyers tend to favour web-based information sources
and services. They should provide the customers with detailed information about the property,
including photos.
Originality/value – The paper specifies the picture of user-defined relevance judgment in the
context of everyday life information seeking.
Keywords Information retrieval, Informationmedia
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Traditionally, the questions of relevance assessment have been studied in the
experimental settings of information retrieval (Borlund, 2003; Mizzaro, 1997). Sin ce the
1990s, however, there is a growing interest to extend the scope of research into
naturalistic settings in which information seekers define their relevance criteria (Barry,
1994). More recently, there have been attempts to enrich the picture of user-defined
relevance judgment in the context of everyday life information seeking (Savolainen and
Kari, 2006). In a major review of relevance studies, Saracevic (2007b, p. 2141) has
recently emphasized the significance of research that would go beyond traditional IR
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
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JDOC
66,1
70
Received 18 February 2009
Revised 28 May 2009
Accepted 29 May 2009
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 66 No. 1, 2010
pp. 70-92
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/00220411011016371
studies in which students are “endlessly used as experimental subjects for relevance
experimentation and observation”. Owing to this bias, “we are not getting a good
understanding of relevance related to real users, in real situations, dealing with real
issues of relevance ... if we are to gain a better understanding of relevance behavior
and effects in diverse populations, other populations should (and even must ) be studied
as well” (Saracevic, 2007b, p. 2141).
The present article contributes to such investigations by focusing on relevance
judgments made by prospective home buyers. They are particularly interesting as
information seekers because the decision to purchase an apartment is far-reaching.
Particularly first-home buyers have to invest a considerable sum of money, and the
loan repayment may even take 30 years. The purchasing decision also is far-reaching
since the household’s residence shapes a major portion of its living environment for
years, perhaps even decades (McCarthy, 1982, p. 43). Owing to the long-time
consequences of the decision, the buyers have to plan their home purchase projects in
detail and seek pertinent information about the housing market. In this context,
therefore, the issues of judging the relevance of information used in the
decision-making are far from trivial.
To explore such issues, an attempt will be made to elucidate the nature of relevance
judgment from the perspective of source preferences. The main attention will be paid to
criteria by whichinformation seekers judge the relevance of informationsources such as
newspapers.Source preference criteria indicatehow people judge the overall relevance of
information sources of various kinds. In the present study, attention will be devoted to
how information seekers explain their preference criteria by characterizing the perceived
strengths and weaknesses of diverse sources. These criteria will be elicited by making
use of the construct of information source horizon. The same construct has been
employed in earlier studies on information seeking practices of environmental activists
and unemployed people (Savolainen, 2008). Thereby, the above study provides useful
comparative data for the present investigation.
The present study is unique because the questions of source preference criteria have
not been explored earlier in greater detail in economically significant contexts of
everyday life information seeking. The study is also unique from the perspective of
consumer studies. Similar to traditional IR studies, mainstream consumer research is
dominated by decontextualized experimental studies that typically draw on university
students as subjects. To complement the experimental approaches drawing on
pre-assigned information search tasks, there is a need for qualitative and naturalistic
studies focusing on real consumers seeking information in everyday contexts (Case,
2007, pp. 293-294).
The article is structured as follows. The next section provides a review of earlier
research. Then, the theoretical framework and the empirical research design are
specified. The main part of the study consists of the empirical review of the source
preferences of prospective home buyers. The article is concluded with the discussion of
the major findings and implications of the study.
Review of literature
Information seeking among prospective home buyers
Information needs related to housing issues are fairly common among people. For
example, a nationwide survey conducted in Great Britain revealed that the top ten
Source
preference
criteria
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