An Integrated Human Information Behavior Research Framework for Information Studies

Abstract

Human information behavior is emerging as an important component of information studies. As in many emerging research areas, one chal-lenge is to identify important facets of human information behavior and understand how different methods can be best used to research these facets. This paper presents the framework of an approach to designing and synthesizing research studies in human information behavior. The framework emerges from previous research in human information be-havior and incorporates Ranganathan's framework for knowledge or-ganization. It proposes that research studies that investigate human in-formation behavior should consider the following facets: personality, matter, energy, space, and time. Personality refers to actors, and in this framework includes participants and their social networks. Matter re-fers to the target of the action. It includes information and information resources, including services and technology that may provide access to information. Energy is the action itself, including the participants' tasks, processes, and goals. Space is the environment of the action, and includes physical space as well as organizational and sociopolitical contexts. Time is the nonspatial continuum in which actions and events occur; in the framework, time is considered an episode, interval, or eon. Facets that should be investigated and taken into account in a study help guide the selection of the research methods for the study. Furthermore, research results from multiple studies can be synthesized by understanding the relationships among the facets investigated in the different studies. 430 Sonnenwald and Iivonen Information studies, an interdisciplinary field involving both scientific research and professional practice, has its origins in the scientific and technical advances following World War II (Saracevic, 1992). It has strong ties to library science, computer science, and cognitive psychology, as well as to communication and other behavioral and social sciences. Its goal is to add understanding and solve problems through the discovery and implementation of models and theories fo-cusing on human information behavior in the context of social, institutional, or individual needs, or a combination thereof and uses of information and the com-munication of knowledge. In recent years, there has been some discussion about which research methods are most appropriate for achieving these goals (Traditionally, quantitative methods, such as experiments, bibliomet-rics, and surveys, were predominantly used in information studies research. In recent years, there has been increased discussion and use of qualitative meth-ods, such as participant observation and unstructured interviews. However, be-cause qualitative research investigates a single setting or situation, it has been criticized for its apparent dependency on a particular person or group of indi-viduals, place, and time, and apparent lack of validity, including reproducibility. A challenge is to understand how research methods can be best used in in-formation studies research. To address this challenge, this article proposes an integrated research framework that provides an approach to combining multi-ple methods in a consistent manner. The approach is evolutionary rather than revolutionary. It emerges from previous research in information studies, incor-porates Ranganathan's framework for knowledge organization, and combines methods that originated in a variety of fields including communication, sociol-ogy, and psychology. It is based on the assumption that human information be-havior, including the seeking and communication of knowledge, is multifac-eted. In various processes and situations these multiple facets, or factors, occur together and affect each other. In the proposed framework, various research methods are integrated or combined to give insights from different points of view and, perhaps, serendipitous results not otherwise possible. The framework has emerged over several years through designing and conducting studies that explored human information behavior in a variety of situations (e.