Youth information-seeking behavior and online government information

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to focus on middle-school-aged young people’s information-seeking behavior and the knowledge and perceptions they have of and about federal government websites. Design/methodology/approach The case study included 37 youth across four middle schools in the mid-Atlantic USA who all participated in a research-focused after-school program. During these sessions, they participated in several data collection activities, including an interview, a survey, a word association activity, an evaluation of the homepage of a government website, and card-sorting. Using conventional, directed, and summative content analysis techniques, the narratives from each data collection activity were coded using in vivo and theory-based terms. Findings The study finds that the majority of participants viewed government websites favorably, but were frequently unsure of what government websites are or who is responsible for their creation. Perhaps more significantly, participants’ views of information-related policies frequently were raised during discussions about government websites. The perceptions reflected the youth information-seeking behaviors and information literacy gaps. Originality/value Overall, these findings shed light on the opinions of an understudied population in e-government research and inform both policy makers and educators on how to best disseminate government information to youth.

Making it tangible: hybrid card sorting within qualitative interviews

“…Among a variety of benefits, Saunders and Thornhill (2011) note: “The use of an in-depth interview alongside a card sort enables the researcher to ensure she or he has the same understanding of the words or phrases on the cards as the participant” (p. 346). Notably, there are several studies addressing information experiences of younger participants that have turned to card sorting within interviews, owing perhaps to its playful, participatory nature (Bar-Ilan and Belous, 2007; Cassidy et al , 2013; Cooper, 2002; Taylor, 2018).…”

“Computer what's your favourite colour?” children's information‐seeking strategies in the classroom

“…Kodama, Jean, Subramaniam, & Taylor, 2017;Subramaniam et al, 2015) where young people's digital literacy and their information-credibility and quality decisions have been explored. Similarly recent investigations explored children's mental models of information seeking interfaces and computers (Robertson, Manches, & Pain, 2017;Taylor, 2018).…”

Youth Research under the Microscope: A Conceptual Analysis of Youth Information Interaction Studies

“…These studies formulated a cognitive‐information system duality to characterize youth's information‐seeking and retrieval behaviours resulting from interactions with information systems. For example, recent YII studies (Robinson, 2014; N. G. Taylor, 2018; Walhout et al, 2017) have adopted similar methodologies to Marchionini, Solomon and Bilal; these early works created a pattern of descriptive work, that while rigorous in execution, was largely atheoretical. This pattern has become the accepted de facto approach for subsequent work and has contributed to a dearth of theory building.…”

“…The conceptual analysis resulted in the typologies of YII studies illustrated on Tables 2-6 Bilal, 2000Cooper, 2002Lorenzen, 2001Subramaniam et al, 2015Taylor, 2018Vanderschantz & Hinze, 2017 Table 3. Typology of rationalism-oriented approaches in YII studies…”