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A study of factors that affect the information-seeking behavior of academic scientists.
- Source :
- Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology; Feb2012, Vol. 63 Issue 2, p336-353, 18p, 1 Diagram, 18 Charts
- Publication Year :
- 2012
-
Abstract
- In an effort to understand how academic scientists seek information relevant to their research in today's environment of ubiquitous electronic access, a correlation framework is built and regression analysis is applied to the survey results from 2,063 academic researchers in natural science, engineering, and medical science at five research universities in the United States. Previous work has reported descriptive statistics about these scientists' information-seeking behavior. This study extends that work to examine relationships between scientists' information-seeking behaviors and their personal and environmental factors. Several regression models, including the Poisson model, the logit model, and the ordered logit model, are built to interpret the correlation among scientists' behaviors. In addition, exploratory factor analysis is used for data reduction. Overall, many factors were found to affect the specific information-seeking behaviors of scientists, including demographic, psychological, role-related, and environmental factors. Of the factors having an effect, academic position was the most important determinant of information behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Subjects :
- UNIVERSITIES & colleges
COLLEGE teachers
CONCEPTUAL structures
DEMOGRAPHY
ECOLOGY
FACTOR analysis
POISSON distribution
QUESTIONNAIRES
REGRESSION analysis
RESEARCH
RESEARCH funding
SCALE analysis (Psychology)
SCIENTISTS
SERIAL publications
SURVEYS
USER interfaces
INFORMATION resources
ELECTRONIC publications
SEARCH engines
INFORMATION-seeking behavior
DATA analysis software
DESCRIPTIVE statistics
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 15322882
- Volume :
- 63
- Issue :
- 2
- Database :
- Complementary Index
- Journal :
- Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 76402678
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.21669