Everyone, everyday, everywhere: Designing a quantitative measure of information behaviors

Many researchers have qualitatively examined the everyday information behaviors of different populations and developed models to understand the behaviors. However, there is a lack of quantitative research that seeks to understand prevalence of these everyday information activities. Given the lack of instruments for measuring everyday behaviors, we turn to information literacy instruments as they encompass the skills used to support these behaviors. Often such instruments are tested with tertiary (university and post-secondary) student populations and focus on academic information behaviors. Academic information behaviors take place in conjunction with everyday information behaviors but are different to one another. Further, the instruments do not account for transnational information behaviors even though international students travel across countries and cultures to pursue higher education. Our study addresses these gaps by developing a survey instrument based on existing information behavior models and information literacy competencies. We collect data from 202 tertiary students studying at universities in Victoria, Australia. Following data collection, we run a factor analysis to validate the instrument and understand what factors shape the phenomenon of everyday information behaviors. Our factor analysis reveals eight factors. The factors indicate that interactions with disagreeable information are separate from those with useful information. They also show that transnational information behaviors are part of the everyday. Our prototype instrument is an important contribution to the literature and the factors will be valuable to future researchers studying everyday information behaviors.