Information Seeking Behavior of Scientists Brad Hemminger School of Information and Library Science University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

How to Study Information Seeking Behavior of Scientists? Survey –Reach many people –Address common questions –Produce lots of feedback for libraries –Quantitative, models of variance (“positivist” approach) Interviews –In depth coverage of selected groups (bioinformatics) –Use grounded theory and critical incident techniques to capture more qualitative, contextual experiences –Develop models of information processing and use

Survey--Long Term Plan Conduct initial (pilot) study at UNC. Develop survey instrument and interview methodologies. Based on analysis of results of the pilot study draft national version, and then get feedback from national sites. Run national study. Setup so that other sites only have to recruit subjects; the entire survey runs off of UNC website. Hopefully this results in large number of sites and participants for minimal experimental costs.

Survey Sampling Technique Census –Need to be able to reach all members –Best if can get response from large segment of population –Results in potentially more input from wider audiences, especially when having comment type, open ended questions –Subject to bias Random sample –Statistically, generally a better choice –Higher cost due to follow-up –Would require significantly more work for our design were we expressly do not record any identifying info

Questions Questions were based on –Prior studies with which we wished to correlate our results. This is facilitated by authors who have published their surveys (in papers as appendix, e.g. Brown), and especially to folks who have put theirs collections of surveys online, e.g.Tenopir). Example: clarify current practices of whether print or electronic is used: for retrieving vs for reading –Covering issues that our librarians and LIS faculty were concerned about –Developed during several drafts and review by representatives from all libraries on campus.

Survey Instrument Choices Paper Phone Web-based. While these can require more effort than anticipated, if the number of survey respondents is over several hundred it is generally more cost effective*. This seemed the best choice since our pilot survey was of several thousand subjects, and our national survey was planned for tens of thousands. Since we have web and database expertise we were able to automate the process with minimal startup costs. *[Schonlau 2001, “Conducting Research Surveys via and the Web”].

Technical Details PHP Surveyor used for web based survey. Other common choice at our school for simpler surveys is Survey Monkey. PHP Surveyor allowed us to ask multi-part questions, and to constrain answers to specific format responses. PHP Surveyor dumps data directly into mysql database. Data is cleaned up, then feed into SAS for analysis.

Contact and Follow-up Subjects are university faculty, grad students and research staff. We approached all science department chairs to get support first. Contact –Initial contact was by giving motivation for study, indication of support by depts&campus, and link to web-based survey. –Follow-ups by letter, then two s –Flyers in department

Analysis For the quantitative response variables standard descriptive statistics (mean, min, max, standard deviation) are computed, and histograms are used to visualize the distribution. Categorical variables are reported as counts and percentages for each category, and displayed as frequency tables.

Analysis: Correlations Categorical vs Categorical –Chi-square Categorical vs Quantitative –Analysis of Variance Quantitative vs Quantitative –Correlation Examples are by dept analysis of other features; age vs preferred interface (Google or Library)

Look at Survey Review questions Cover examples of where we learned better ways to do things Some “hot of the press” results… SurveySurvey Local CopyLocal Copy

Wrap-up and Promotional Message Public Digital Repository for surveys (UNC is willing to host webspace and wiki). Information about national survey –We will hold an open meeting about the national survey immediately following this session, outside this room –We are still recruiting sites –Any and all sites are welcome. Entire survey run from UNC; sites only need to recruit participants. –For more information see the protocol and study announcement document: (local copy) copy or