The reality of media preferences: Do professional groups vary in awareness?

Abstract

This study is based on earlier research by the author that employed social judgment analysis (SJA; J. SteflMabry, 2001SteflMabry, , 2003 to identify the information judgment preferences held by professional groups. This study explores the extent to which individuals, professional groups, and subgroups are self-aware of their judgment profiles. Three specialized groups of professionals-law enforcement, medicine, and education-were chosen to determine if preference profiles cluster around professions or around demographic and other background variables. As the proliferation of data continues to increase, the need to understand users' media preference and selection decisions is of tremendous value to every industry, governmental agency, and institution of learning. In 1966, H. Menzel first raised concern about the reliability of users' to self-assess, and scientists continue to explore the issue of competency in human judgment. To understand the reliability of users' self-assessment regarding media preferences, this study examines the extent to which individuals and groups are self-aware of the empirical judgment profiles they employ in evaluating information source scenarios. This investigation explores the congruence of three groups of professionals' self-reported media preferences as compared to their empirical judgment values, as defined by social judgment analysis.

The effect of socio-demographic characteristics on the information-seeking behaviors of police officers

“…Even though "gender" and "roles in police station" were significantly related to the outcome variable, multiple regression suggests that the only significant predictor for the context of keeping up to date was "roles used by police officers." In addition, the current study suggests an insignificant relationship between the information sources used by police officers and their educational level in terms of Stefl-Mabry (2005) revealed that education had no effect on the choosing of information sources. Al-Daihani and Rehman (2007) also found no significant differences regarding use of information sources and educational level.…”

Enhancing classroom instruction with online news

“…There is limited research specifically investigating how teachers seek information (Virkus and Mathiesen, 2019). Some studies look at limited corpuses, either education resources or teachers' personal collections (Diekema and Olsen, 2012); others include teachers as a user group (Sellen et al , 2002; Stefl-Mabry, 2005), finding source plays a role in assessing relevance and different tasks call for different technological capabilities.…”