A question of quality: The effect of source quality on information seeking by women in IT professions

Abstract

This paper presents preliminary results from a study of how women in information technology (IT) professions use a range of information sources in their day-to-day work activities. Through a questionnaire survey, the study investigates the effects of Perceived Source Accessibility and Perceived Source Quality on the selection and use of information sources. Thirteen information sources, including the World Wide Web and Web-based computer-mediated communication, were identified. Sixty-seven participants completed the survey. The most frequently used information source is the World Wide Web, followed by mass media, colleagues in the same department, computer-mediated communication, business professionals and associates, and colleagues in a different groupldepartment. The least used information sources are the internal library, and competitors. For many of the sources, there was a strong relationship between perceived source quality and source usage. This finding runs counter to early, well-known studies that concluded that scientists and engineers selected sources based only on their accessibility. Surprisingly, the present study did not find a significant relationship between source accessibility and source usage. The implications for research are discussed.

Shall I Google it or ask the competent villain down the hall? The moderating role of information need in information source selection

“…For instance, search engines can put useful information at the seeker's fingertips, but such easily accessed information can have questionable quality when anyone can post to the Internet. Hence, how to select the information sources which have the best trade‐off between potential benefits and the associated cost of attainment can be a real challenge (Gerstberger & Allen, 1968; Hertzum, 2002; Marton & Choo, 2002), particularly when people have limited time and cognitive resources with which to sift through these sources.…”

“…Yet, studies on the relative importance of these two factors for information source selection have produced mixed results. While some studies have found that information seekers deem accessibility more important than quality in seekers' source selection (e.g., Culnan, 1984; Hertzum & Pejtersen, 2000; O'Reilly, 1982), others have found just the opposite (e.g., Marton & Choo, 2002; Woudstra & van den Hooff, 2008). Rather than trying to prioritize one source characteristic over the other, the present study proposes to investigate how individuals create a balance between quality and accessibility since people take both into consideration when seeking information.…”

The quality versus accessibility debate revisited: A contingency perspective on human information source selection

“…Source quality-the perceived quality of the information the source is expected to provide (e.g., technical expertise) coupled with the relevance of the source's information to the problem being addressed (Gerstberger & Allen, 1968;Marton & Choo, 2002)-is consistently dominated by it (Hertzum, 2014).…”

“…According to these studies, it is not source accessibility that dominates source quality, but vice versa (see, e.g., Marton & Choo, 2002;Xu, Tan, & Yang, 2006;Zimmer & Henry, 2007). A number of relatively new source selection and use studies show that employees select sources solely on the basis of their expected quality, maximizing the quality of information they expect to receive, regardless of accessibility.…”

“…The first model-based on the results of initial source selection studies in the 1960s (Gerstberger & Allen, 1968;Rosenberg, 1967)-can be described as the "least effort" model of source selection (Hardy, 1982): Employees select those sources that require the least amount of effort to access. Thus, in this model, accessibility-the perceived ease with which one can reach a source and obtain information from that source (Culnan, 1985;Gerstberger & Allen, 1968;Marton & Choo, 2002)-is seen as the driving force behind the choice for a certain information source over others.…”