The effect of personal, professional, and psychological attributes, and information seeking behavior on the use of information sources by educators

Current research on information retrieval suggests that greater attention be given to the study of information habits and needs of users of information. It has also been suggested that the user be viewed more broadly as existing within interacting cognitive, emotional, and social systems. In this study it was hypothesized that (1) 13 sources of information would cluster into several distinct types; (2) information source use by a random sample of educational practitioners in British Columbia, Canada (n = 1078) could be predicted by position, education level, experience, dissemination habits, attitude toward information, and sense of isolation from information; (3) educators would differ in their reaction to a list of 11 desirable characteristics of information; and (4) educators would differ in the extent to which they viewed 10 problems in finding and using information as influencing their work. Findings from a questionnaire analysis revealed that (1) position, dissemination, and attitude were strong predictors of information use, education was a moderate predictor, and experience and isolation accounted for low percentages of the variance; (2) information sources clustered into three orthogonal factors: close at hand traditional sources, less accessible print sources, and organized interpersonal sources; (3) all 11 characteristics of information were considered relatively important with attitude toward information strongly influencing responses; and (4) respondents did not generally feel that the 10 problems posed significant barriers in their use of information. The findings of the study offer support for the notion that information source use by educators is the result of a complex set of interactions among variables and examination of the interaction of personal, professional, and psychological attributes of users provides a useful beginning in understanding the dimensions influencing the use of information sources.