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The internet constitutes an important platform for parents to find information. How online information searching is linked to parental self-efficacy (PSE)--defined as parents' perceptions about their abilities to have a positive impact on their children--is still unknown. This two-wave study examined cross-lagged associations between PSE and parents' online information searching, as well as the prospective effect of perceived information overload on PSE and online information searching. Moreover, we examined whether these associations differed depending on the online context (governmental-run or nongovernmental-run websites). We used a sample of 214 parents of children (equal number of boys and girls) <4 years (85% of the parents were mothers and 93% were born in Sweden), who completed an online survey twice, 1 year apart. The results showed that parents who felt more efficacious at T1 reported a decrease in online information searching over time. The frequency of parents online searching, however, did not predict changes in PSE. In addition, the effects of information overload depended on the type of websites parents used. Among parents who used both types of websites to search for information, higher information overload was linked with increases in information searching and decreases in PSE over time. The results suggest that perceptions of low self-efficacy and feelings of overload might motivate parents to use the internet more to search for information.

The aim of this grounded theory study was to explore late-adolescents' process of sexual development along with their information- and support-seeking behaviors in a Swedish context. Data were collected in semi-structured interviews with late-adolescents aged between 18 and 21 years in high schools in central Sweden. The results showed that late-adolescents' sexual development involved seeking for knowledge, discussing norms and attitudes, learning through interactions, and growing through practice and experience. Information- and support-seeking behaviors were observed throughout their development. This study highlights that, in order to be able to provide adequate help and support, healthcare professionals need to have an awareness of the changing information and support needs of adolescents in our constantly changing and diverse society.

Introduction: Self-guided learning has had a major impact on adult education, where information seeking and use are key aspects of learning. With their lack of experience in study contexts, the students are nevertheless assumed to develop information literacy. Method: The paper aims to create an understanding of how information literacy can be recognised in the tension between the schools' practice and the students' self-directed learning. This is done through a qualitative case study including forty-three interviews, thirty observations and seventeen documents, which gave in-depth knowledge of information activities in relation to a complex school assignment. Analysis: Using a socio-cultural perspective, the analysis led to the identification of several critical aspects of information literacy. Results: The aspects included the distinction between quantitative and qualitative information seeking, critical approaches towards information, knowledge of genres, the ability to identify and use various tools, and the ability to communicate conceptually about information seeking and use. Conclusions: The findings reveal an absence of interaction about information seeking and use in the educational context, as well as a lack of common references in the form of tools and support, leading to difficulties for the students in achieving the results that were expected according to learning objectives. [Paper presented at the Information Seeking in Context (ISIC): The Information Behaviour Conference, Part 1 (11th, Zadar, Croatia, September 20-23, 2016).]

Background: In the past decade, scholars of information science have started to conduct research on information behaviour in serious leisure. Presently, these studies lack common concepts and terms and empirical discoveries are not easy to assemble into theory. Aim: This conceptual and methodological paper surveys the aforementioned research area and introduces Anders Hektor's model of information behaviour in conjunction with the serious leisure perspective as a means to systematically study information behaviour in serious leisure. Method: Three methods are employed. The first is a selective literature review and intellectual history of research into information behaviour in serious leisure. The second is a conceptual analysis of Hektor's model that relates its key features to the serious leisure perspective. The third consists of a deductive audit of three forms of serious leisure (the liberal arts hobby, amateur musicianship, and the hobby of running), utilising the frameworks, concepts, and terms outlined in the paper. Results: Studies of information behaviour in serious leisure have increased and deepened in the past decade, largely through idiographic case studies. Hektor's model of information behaviour, with its locus in everyday life and precise delineation of eight information activities, can complement such research designs. A deductive audit guided by Hektor's model illuminated information activities within the three forms of serious leisure and enabled comparative observations. Conclusions: When combined with the serious leisure perspective, Hektor's model enables research that is comparative and more precise. However, the extent to which this model captures physical or embodied information should be further examined. [Paper presented at the Information Seeking in Context (ISIC): The Information Behaviour Conference, Part 1 (11th, Zadar, Croatia, September 20-23, 2016).]

Introduction: This paper reports results from an ethnographic study of teacher trainees' information activities in digital, group-based learning and their relation to the interplay between use and appropriation of digital tools and the learning environment. Method: The participants in the present study are 249 pre-school teacher trainees in Sweden. Three key informants and their teams were followed during a course module using online and offline participant observation. The produced material includes transcribed interviews with nine students, recorded digital interactions from Facebook, Google Drive and Prezi, field notes and a field diary. Analysis: The material was read repeatedly, coded and comparatively analysed using the lens of information literacy and the concept appropriation. The analysis generated recurring themes. These themes emerged as phases of the group-based learning process. Results: The results illustrate how information activities during teacher trainees' digital, group-based learning are performed during four phases--setting the scene, negotiating the topic, gathering material and presenting the assignment. Conclusions: Crucial aspects of an information literacy of digital, group-based learning in teacher training are identified. The learning environment of teacher training constrains and enables use and appropriation of digital tools in terms of flexibility, lack of participation and transparency.

Introduction: The concept of information needs is significant within the field of Information Needs Seeking and Use. "How" information needs can be studied empirically is however something that has been called into question. The main aim of this paper is to explore the methodological consequences of discursively oriented theories when studying information needs. The discussion takes its starting point in the model of information needs and question formations presented by Robert S. Taylor in the 1960s. Method: The empirical material used for exemplifying the proposed methodology consists of video recordings from an ethnographical study conducted at a Swedish primary school. Analysis: The analysis is guided by concepts based in sociocultural and dialogistic theories and is directed towards question-negotiations in conversations and interactions in naturalistic settings. Conclusions: Earlier studies of information needs are often based on the idea of an individually constructed actual need as it is presented in the first level in Taylor's model. With an interest in the two latter levels of the model the analytical focus is shifted to question-negotiations which are seen as the results of situated discursive and collective efforts. This shift entails a methodological shift in the study of information needs. (Contains 3 figures and 4 tables.)

Introduction: We aim to create an in-depth understanding of how pupils in upper secondary school negotiate the credibility and authority of information as part of their practices of learning. Particular focus is on the use of user-created resources, such as "Wikipedia", where authorship is collective and/or hard to determine. Method: An ethnographic study was conducted in an upper secondary school class. Methods included observation, group interviews and information seeking diaries in the form of blogs. Analysis: The empirical material from the class room study was categorised and aggregated into five themes, which emerged as a result of the interplay between the empirical material and a perspective based in socio-cultural theory. Results: The pupils make credibility assessments based on methods developed for traditional media where, for instance, origin and authorship are important. They employ some user-created sources, notably "Wikipedia", because these are easily available, but they are uncertain about when these sources should be considered credible. Conclusions: In an increasingly diverse media world, pupils' credibility assessments need to be informed by a socio-technical understanding of sources which takes both social and material aspects into account. The diversity of resources requires that pupils assess credibility for the particular situation in which they use information.

Introduction: The Internet has radically changed the global availability of scholarly publications. Today, a substantial part of the resources accessible for researchers and university students are offered through electronic site licenses, making the supply of easily obtainable information larger than ever. This brings forth an important question: what are the qualitative and quantitative effects of this development on the use of reference material in research and studies? Method: To address the research question, reference lists of Masters' theses from 1985, 1993 and 2003 were studied in three disciplines: economics, psychology and mathematics, followed by semi-structured interviews of students who had finished their thesis in 2003. Analysis: The quantitative data were analysed using analysis of variance (ANOVA) with the statistical program SPSS, where the significance of the results was measured with Dunnet's t-test. Results: The findings showed a substantial increase in the use of scholarly articles as references throughout the studied time periods, although the amount of other information sources had remained largely unchanged. There were also significant differences between the three disciplines in the contents of their reference lists, the amount of Internet resources that students used, how they sought and obtained publications, and how they selected their sources. Conclusions: The Internet appears to have had a profound effect on the type and quantity of information that students use as references in Master's theses. One of the main problems that students reported was a lack of training in information seeking, and the abundance of irrelevant information on the Internet. Many respondents would have needed additional training on using library databases.

Introduction: The aim of this article is to look at how attitudes towards the Internet technology differ between boys and girls, and how this affects their critical approach when seeking information. Method: The approach is ethnographic, and the material was collected by means of observations, conversations, questionnaires, interviews, computer logs and reading documents. Analyses: The analyses were made with the help of software for qualitative analysis, where all sentences both from interviews and field notes were coded. Some analyses were strictly quantitative and compared data from coded qualitative material with questionnaires and computer logs in a database sheet. Others were of qualitative nature and based on selected material from the coded texts. Results: It cannot be seen that boys and girls have different interests in the Internet technology in practice. But boys talk about their knowledge to a greater extent, and this interplays with their reflections about the Internet's reliability. Conclusion: Since a more developed cognitive model of the Internet seems to lead to more developed critical thinking about information on the Internet, it is important to help especially girls to develop models of the Internet, otherwise there is a risk that traditional gender roles will be preserved.

The research reported in this article explores and discusses students' use of laptops in a 1:1 setting. A problem experienced by teachers is that the laptops are possible distractors and tempt students to engage in use that is not in line with the teacher's idea of what would be suitable in relation to the current assignment. Three annual surveys in combination with interviews and classroom observations were carried out in two Swedish secondary schools during a phase of the implementation of 1:1-laptops. The results show how that there is not a reciprocal correlation between sanctioned laptop use and unsanctioned laptop use. The findings also show that the students' unsanctioned use of laptops was relatively high, but stable throughout the duration of the three years. Furthermore, results show that the number of students who do not game or chat at all has increased every year. The findings have implications for the discussions concerning the use of personal laptops in secondary schools.

Universities globally are showing increased interest in the potential of social media as a marketing recruitment tool. This paper explores how and why potential postgraduate business students looking to study internationally use social media in their educational decision-making process. Due to a lack of existing research, this study adopted an exploratory approach, gathering data through in-depth interviews with 12 postgraduate international students at an Australian university. The findings indicate that besides Facebook and YouTube, students are using blogs in their study search. The two most common reasons for social media usage are finding out about student life and reading reviews from former students. In the decision-making process, social media is mostly used in the information search and evaluation stages. Students' use of social media also varies across source countries. Our findings are a good information source for education marketers who need to engage more actively with social media.

In international conventions as well as in the national discourses of many countries, children who do not grow up with their biogenetic parents have the right to receive information about their origin. The meaning of origin in intercountry adoption, however, is not necessarily the same as in artificial donor insemination (AID). Through an analysis of the material published by the Swedish Intercountry Adoption Authority from 1972 to 2004 and by discussing the often-drawn analogy between adoption and AID, the present article aims to investigate the varying meanings that have been ascribed to origin and the arguments that have been used in support of its importance. (Contains 5 notes.)

Three laboratory experiments on social referencing examined whether infants' tendencies to look at and use positive information from the experimenter could be interpreted from a perspective of novelty or expertise. In Study 1, novelty was manipulated. Forty-eight 12-month-old infants participated. In a between-subject design, a more novel or a less novel experimenter presented an ambiguous object and provided positive information. The infants looked more at and regulated their behavior more in accordance with information coming from the less novel experimenter. In Study 2, expertise was manipulated. Forty-eight 12-month-old infants were exposed to one experimenter who showed expertise about the laboratory situation and one experimenter who did not show such competence. The infants looked more at and regulated their behavior more in accordance with information coming from the expert. In Study 3, 40 12-month-old infants participated. The infants were exposed to a toy-expert who was either novel or familiar. The infants, in both groups, looked as much at the toy-experts and used the information regardless of whether the novel or familiar toy-expert had provided information. The findings suggest that novelty does not increase looking in ambiguous situations. Instead, the results support the expertise perspective of infant looking preferences. (Contains 3 tables.)

To use the Internet for sex educational purposes and for sex information has been recognised by prior research as benefits of the technological development and important areas to investigate, but few empirical studies have so far been conducted. The purpose of this study was to identify those who use the Internet to seek information about sexual issues and to examine the reasons for using the Internet for this purpose. A total of 1913 respondents completed an online Swedish questionnaire about Internet sexuality and the 1614 who reported using the Internet for sexual purposes were selected for analysis in the current study. More than one-half of these respondents claimed to use the Internet to seek information about sexual issues. The results showed that men and women of all ages used the Internet for this purpose, suggesting that the need for sexual education persists even in the adult years. The reasons for seeking information were primarily to get knowledge about the body, about how to have sex, and out of curiosity. Knowing who seeks information about sexuality on the Internet and the reasons why may be helpful in identifying the needs of different groups of individuals as well as tailoring the information provided, both online and offline. (Contains 5 tables.)

This article contributes to discourse-oriented, information-seeking research by showing how discourses, from a neopragmatist perspective, can be explored as tools that people employ when they actively engage in information practices in varied social contexts. A study of nurses and the nursing profession in Sweden is used as an empirical example of such a context, which is in the article understood as a community of justification. The nurses' accounts of information practices are further analyzed as expressions of their use of discourses as tools in the promotion of specific interests as to what the nursing profession should be. The analysis shows how the science-oriented medical discourse and the holistically oriented nursing discourse are two tools employed in the nurses' accounts of their information practices. In these discourses, which operate at both a workplace and an occupational level, a key component is what nurses consider to be relevant information.

Interviews regarding physical and sexual development were conducted with 838 children ages five through 15 in Australia, England, North America, and Sweden. Children identified the people whom they asked sex-related questions and indicated their major sources of information. Mothers, school, and the media were the most frequently cited sources. (Author/DB)

Analyzed relationships between Swedish citizens' educational levels and their information seeking, knowledgeability, and information dissemination to other individuals and politicians. Found that the poorly edcucated were high on information seeking but lower on retention and dissemination. Concluded that the "influence gap" is more of a threat to democracy than the "information gap." (PD)

The aim of this paper is to explore and to make visible how the information work of hospital librarians is enacted in key practices where services of the hospital library are employed to support evidence-based practice. The empirical material was produced at three hospital libraries in three different regions in Sweden between January and March 2020. A practice-oriented approach using the theoretical lens information work is employed to analyze nine semi-structured interviews with hospital librarians and hospital library managers, together with field notes from observations of interactions between hospital librarians and healthcare practitioners. The analysis investigates the conditions for information work performed by hospital librarians as they participate in three key practices: clinical practices, information seeking practices, and HTA-practices. The results of the analysis are related to four categories of invisible information work, and the nature of the information work done to counter different types of invisibilities within the key practices is discussed. The findings suggest that a substantial amount of the information work of hospital librarians is invisible to clinicians. At the same time, considerable efforts are made by hospital librarians to counter different types of invisibility, for example through building relationships with healthcare staff and to develop and make specialized competencies visible. In particular, the importance assigned to evidence-based practice in healthcare allows for the librarians to be regarded by clinicians as legitimate partners with clearly defined competencies in specific situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A substantial part of the work conducted by librarians at Swedish regional libraries concerns staying alert and informed in ways that allow for continuous development of the kind of knowledge and abilities that are required for doing a qualified job, but this part of the work is elusive and hard to identify. This paper presents an empirical study that elucidates this specific kind of work of keeping abreast and updated with professional information. Empirical data were produced through interviews and logbooks with 10 members of staff at 4 regional libraries in Sweden. The data were analysed by employing Marcia Bates' model of different information-seeking modes. The results of the study show that the activity in focus is seamlessly intertwined with other work activities and enacted in a variety of ways that are adapted after other work tasks (than the information seeking in itself) and dependent on individual preferences and routines. Since there is a certain conception of this activity as something that should be carried out in a certain systematic way and since it is something that one as a librarian ought to be good at, it is furthermore often associated with a normative dimension that provokes a sense of guilt among the study participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine public trust and distrust in governmental food and nutrition authorities, through analyzing 727 letters sent electronically to the Swedish National Food Agency by lay people. Using thematic analysis, four themes were developed, defining public expressions of trust and distrust in official dietary advice. Trust was expressed as (a) seeking to confirm and clarify dietary advice or (b) seeking official arbitration between competing dietary advice. Distrust was expressed as (c) questioning and scrutinizing dietary advice or (d) protesting and resisting dietary advice. Notably, expressions of distrust employed discursive practices that both mirrored authoritative discourses and subverted official advice, by appealing to scientific language and "alternative" evidence. All letters positioned the agency as the ultimate authority on healthy eating; notwithstanding whether the agency's advice was to be followed or resisted. Thus, the letters revealed how the same authoritative discourses can simultaneously be a site of public trust and distrust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents findings from a series of research studies conducted between 1998 and 2010 on the ways in which knowledge formation occurs through students' own research and on the interaction between information seeking and use and learning. Our point of departure is that information seeking and learning are closely interwoven in constantly on-going human activity. Our studies have directed particular interest to the ways in which information and communication technologies (ICTs) and new digital media shape conditions for learning. The research design was inspired by ethnographical studies, including observations, field notes, video recordings, interviews, questionnaires and documents produced in the practices studied. In the present article we have chosen to focus on four main findings common to the series of research projects, which together indicate not only changes within schools but also on a structural level. Firstly, we claim that the new digital tools which mediate information seeking and learning change the conditions for learning itself. Secondly, information seeking via new technologies changes conditions for how students assume responsibility and construct knowledge. Thirdly, new conditions for the division of responsibility and meaning-making were identified throughout all six projects. The fourth main finding concerns how the communicative structures of school were changed. We suggest that these four main findings contribute to an understanding of a gradual shift in the school discourse, which took place during the first decade of this millennium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a study on how primary school educators describe children's use of ICT. This is done in order to lay a foundation for an understanding of how information literacies may be enacted in Swedish primary schools. The empirical material consists of four focus group conversations conducted with 20 educators at three Swedish primary schools. The analysis is focussed on how the educators discuss and describe ICT as tools for information activities and as parts of children's childhoods. Two descriptions of childhoods are identified in the analysis: 1) the good childhood, in which there is room for traditional tools for information seeking such as books; 2) the contemporary and insufficient childhood, happening outside the school context, where digital tools for information seeking and other activities are used. The task of primary school is described as counterbalancing contemporary childhoods and therefore avoiding ICT. The authors discuss how the implications of these approaches could be limiting for how information literacies may be enacted in primary school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]