In collaboration with four Master student teams we are examining
organisational information seeking behaviour in general using the information
seeking model developed by Leckie, Pettigrew and Sylvain (1996). During the
spring of 2005, a web-based survey was issued to three different organisations
and the result was (partly) used to focus the qualitative part of the students
study. Via open-ended interviews, the students collected critical incidents
(see Critical Incident Technique by Flanagan (1954)) concerning information
seeking episodes and we thereafter applied Leckie et al's model to identify
four categories to apply when coding these sets of critical incidents. In our
content analytic procedure we used Perreault and Leigh's (2001) reliability
index to measure both intra-judge and inter-judge reliability. The students
used these results to answer their research questions respectively, as
accounted for below, and their essays, which all passed examination, were
published in mid-June 2005. During the winter of 2005/2006, the senior
researchers shall analyse the aggregated material further and we expect this
(hopefully) rich material to be able to generate many valuable new
insights.
Main actors: Dick
By examining a week's worth of log files from a corporate intranet search
engine, we have analysed the actual web searching behaviour of real users in a
real business environment. While building on previous research on public search
engines, we apply an alternative session definition that we argue is more
appropriate. Our results regarding session length, query construction and
result page viewing confirm some of the findings from similar studies carried
out on public search engines but further our understanding of web searching by
presenting details on corporate users' activities. In particular, we suggest
that search sessions are shorter than previously suggested, search queries have
fewer terms than observed for public search engines, and number of examined
result pages is smaller than reported in other research. This suggests that
information retrieval tools for intranet may need to be designed differently.
Two papers have been published so far.
Main actor: Dick
A longitudinal study analysing and comparing a single organisation's
intranet search engine log files over four years (data was collected February
2000, October 2002 and October 2004) is also underway. This work will reveal if
and how search behaviours have varied over time, something that to our
knowledge has not previously been published. The questions we are interested in
include; Is behaviour stabile or varying over time? If varying, is there a
trend, i.e., is behaviour going in a certain direction?
Main actors: Tia and Taline
Instead of investigating one parameter at the time, the purpose of this
activity is to study the correlation between a number of different aspects of
search behaviour simultaneously. This approach allows us to generate a
visualisation or a map of search behaviour that may be used to identify
similarities and differences between clusters of intranet users. Questions we
hope to answers include; What main groups can be identified? What are the
characteristics of these groups? What design implications can be drawn from
these insights?
Main actor: Henrik
The tentative title of this thesis is "A comparison of information need
at different levels in an organisation" and we aim to cover strategic as
well as operational aspects. The main focus is on how managers seek
information.
Main actor: Annika, Michael and Sandra
The focus of this project is to study information seeking behaviour on
intranet among white collar workers at a large manufacturing company, e.g. to
which extent do the employees use intranet to look for information and which
are the primary factors determining if intranet is used as a source for
information. Considering the size of the organisation, a vast amount of
resources is required to maintain and develop its intranet and therefore we
hope to achieve recommendations that will increase the usage of intranet as a
source for information.
Main actors: Mikael, Magnus and Christer
The aim of this project is to study people’s information
seeking/searching processes and how an intranet portal may affect them. The
goal is then to give recommendations regarding a strategy for the usage of
intranet portal as an information base.
Main actor: Beate
In this activity, we are looking at a newly implemented intranet for a
municipality in the Gothenburg region. We are concerned with questions
regarding information seeking and how the diversity of the organisation and the
unstructured and decentralized intranet effects the information seeking
process.
Main actors: Jennie and Mariana.