Presented by: Saeed Rezaei Sharifabadi, Associate Professor

(Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran)

SIG USE Annual Research Symposium at ASIS&T 2009

November 7, Vancouver, Canada

Reseach Activities, Information Seeking and Communication Behavior of Australian Academic Psychologists:

Effects of the Internet

Seminar Outline

What is the Internet? Why Internet as a research topic? Why Psychologists as study subjects? How data were collected? Who participated? Who used Internet / Who did not? What did they say? Is Internet really affecting academic work? What next?

What is the Internet I dream of the day when I will have a little

gadget on my desk which will have a telephone dial on top and slot at the bottom. By using the dial it will be possible to obtain within one minute, a list of references in any desired area covering any desired period of time, or to obtain the table of contents of any desired journal, or to obtain a copy of any desired article for which the reference is known. Such a device is technically possible and would be worth every penny spent on its development (APA 1963, Report #2, P.35)

Internet from a user-oriented point of view:

‘…is not computers, servers, routers, multimegabyte-per-second transfer rates, or specialised software. It is a community of users whose work is facilitated, not dominated, by hardware and software. (Ruth & Gouet, 1993, P. 49)

Why Internet as a research topic Internet as one the most popular

example of technological progress and innovation in the areas of CMCs and electronic networks has contributed to changes in almost every aspects of its users’ lives. The impact of the Internet on scholarly communication, and changes in information seeking behavior are some areas worthy of study

Why psychologists as study subjects? How can the use of electronic networks facilitate

the tasks and goal of particular communities of users within academic setting? (McClure, 1994)

The information needs and information gathering behavior of psychologists have been studied extensively by APA in the 1960s. Therefore, base-line data from the pre-electronic era exist for them.

More generally, psychologists are themselves interested in studying various aspects of behavior and are therefore likely to respond well to study of their own behaviour.

How data were collected Exploratory study (printed questionnaire ) Base-line study (printed questionnaire) In-depth study (on-line questionnaire) Diary study (on-line diary) ================= Publications study (citation analysis) Monitoring log data (transaction logs) of

actual use

An evolving approach Please tick the boxes below to indicate

your willingness to participate in other aspects of my study,

* An interview * A printed questionnaire * An online follow up study

Who participated? Exploratory study (72%) 21 out of 29

psychologists in the School of Psychology, UNSW Base-line study (54%) 283 out of 527

psychologists from 22 schools of psychology in Australian UNIs

In-depth study(84%) 100 out of 119 psychologists from 22 schools of psychology in Australian UNIs

Diary study (26%) 26 out of 100 psychologists from 16 schools of psychology in Australian UNIs

Who used the Internet / Who did not?

The results of the base-line study revealed that:

239 respondents (94%) were Internet users

15 respondents did not use the Internet

What did they say?

Internet non-users (N=15)• It is more trouble than it is worth (5) • I do not have access to the Internet (3)• I do not feel it would be of any great use

to me (2)• I do not have time (2)• Other reasons, like lack of training and

retirement

Internet users’ comments

Changes in informal communication: Email as the single most useful Internet

service - Invisible college phenomenon- Immediate contact that is not complicated by

social aspects of personal communication (S 132)

More interaction with more colleagues - especially overseas ... I have had more

interaction with more researchers / collaborators since using the Internet (S 90)

Excuses for little interaction: - I don’t interact much. I am somehow

shy, I tend to work away at small projects that interest me, there is little time and other such excuses (S 16)

Wider collaboration on research / writing:- Before Internet, virtually all my

collaboration was with people here, whereas now most of it is with people overseas (S 201)

Effects on formal communication: • Publications - Role of Journal:(Communicating information; Validating the quality

of research; Distributing rewards; Building scientific communities)

I don’t really believe this is useful. We have an information overload and I prefer that my reading is screened by referees. If it’s good research, it will be published in good journals. There’s too much rubbish around already (S 227)

Quantity of research / writing: - More, with quicker and easier

communication with overseas collaborators (S 125)

- More, I suppose, because I find access more immediate and am more stimulated (S 16)

- No change. The Internet is a tool to do what I would have done anyway. But there are some likely new directions which may change this (eg. starting up an electronic journal next year) (S 176)

Quality of research / writing: - ‘The opportunity to see what others are doing

and contribute has improved the quality of my work’ (S 104)

- ‘Better quality due to more feedback on my work and generation of ideas. (S 103)

- ‘I haven’t noticed any changes in the quantity or quality of my research or writing (although I expect there to be beneficial changes in the future as I become more adept at finding my way around the Internet. (S 115).

Internet role in future improvements of research / writing activities:

- ‘I am associate editor of an electronic journal. I guess, I’ll be looking to develop electronic publications’ (S 101)

- ‘Establishment of Internet courses and seminars. Having a course taught by the big names in the field regardless of their physical location and allowing access to students across the globe will be a very useful supplement to face-to-face classroom participation’(S 164)

- ‘Exchanging ideas; electronic exchange of documents; electronic submission of papers; dissemination of project outputs through WWW’ (S 253)

- ‘ I expect full-text library resources to increase, and search engines to improve. This will make a big difference in accessing information. I do field research on real and complex problems, and there are many relevant literatures. Access will become very much easier, I expect’ (S 176).

- ‘ If it is legal, I’m planning to create a Web page about a friend in prison- who I am sure was wrongly convicted’ (S 70).

Is Internet really affecting academic work?

- Has it? I am not sure.

‘Currently, we are unable to assess meaningfully the impact of global networking on individuals, organisations, and larger social institutions. The academic institution is not exempt from this problem. (McClure, 1994, P.2)

Will it? I believe so! But, there is a need for

further empirical examination of the effects of electronic networks on users.

As the Internet continues to expand its base of users (both in terms of the scholarly and general communities), more research will be needed to continue to develop our knowledge of communication and information seeking patters. (Hirsh, 1997, Examiner’s report on Ph.D thesis)

More Research (mid1990s-2009) Information overload (Turetken & Sharda, 2004;

Lucian & Farias, 2009)

Internet addiction (Young, 2007; Bakken, Wenzel, Götestam, Johansson, & Oren, 2009)

Establishing the quality and relevance of information found on the Web (Borlund, 2003; Choo et al., 2000; Spink, Greisdorf, & Bateman, 1998)

life gaps in information usage (Kraaijenbrink, 2007)

NO Research on psychologists’ information seeking

behavior since the mid-1990s study on Australian academic psychologists use of the Internet

Uncertainty Contiues:

Jone, Johnson-Yale, Millermaier, and Perez’s Study (2008):

overall Internet use for academic purposes has increased

but satisfaction with it for academic interactions may be on the decline.

This presentation is mainly prepared based on my Ph.D. Research results:

Rezaei Sharifabadi, S. (1996). Effects of the Internet on research activities, information seeking and communication behavior of Australian academic psychologists. Ph. D. dissertation, the University of New South Wales. School of Information, Library and Archive Studies (SILAS). Full Text(PDF) Available at: http://staff.alzahra.ac.ir/rezaei/Ph.D%20Dissertation.htm

References: American Psychological Association. (1963-69). Reports of the Project on Scientific Information Exchange

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norwegian adults: A stratified probability sample study. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology , 121-127. Borlund, P. (2003). The concept of relevance in IR. Journal of the American Society for Information

Science and Technology, 54(10), 913–925. Choo, C. W., Detlor, B., & Turnbull, D. (2000). Web work: information seeking and knowledge work on the

world wide web. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Lucian, R. and Farias, S.A. (200 Kraaijenbrink, J. (2007). Engineers and the Web: An Analysis of Real Life Gaps in Information Usage,

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