scholarly journals A Leaf from Algonquin Park: Preliminary findings of a content analysis of information practice stereotypes in the documentary trail of a world-famous provincial park (1890-2018)

Author(s):  
Angela Pollak

This longitudinal, retrospective study presents preliminary findings from an in-progress content analysis of the documentary paper trail associated with Algonquin Provincial Park. The project seeks to understand how local residents, visitors and Indigenous people of the Algonquin Park area are represented in published accounts of people who have come into contact with them, and how those representations reflect the actual information seeking behaviors of, and stereotypes associated with, these rural populations.Cette étude rétrospective longitudinale présente les résultats préliminaires d'une analyse de contenu en cours de la trace documentaire associée au parc provincial Algonquin. Le projet vise à comprendre comment les résidents locaux, les visiteurs et les Autochtones de la région du parc Algonquin sont représentés dans des comptes rendus publiés de personnes qui ont été en contact avec eux et comment ces représentations reflètent les comportements actuels de recherche d'information de ces populations rurales et les stéréotypes qui leur sont associés.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gyeonghui Jeong ◽  
Hanna Choi

BACKGROUND The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has also emerged as an infodemic, worsening the harm of the pandemic for people. The situation has highlighted the need for a deeply rooted understanding of health-information seeking behaviors (HISB). OBJECTIVE The aim of this paper is to review and provide insight regarding methodologies and the construct of content HISB surveys by answering the following research question: what are the characteristics of measurement tools for assessing HISBs in nationally representative surveys around the world? METHODS The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic review and Meta-Analysis Protocols (PRISMA-P) was used as a framework for the study. A data search was performed through six international and two Korean search engines between October 22, 2017, and November 13, 2017. Initially, the studies performed among nationally representative samples within the past 10 years were included to discover HISB survey instruments. The methodologies of the studies using HISB surveys were analyzed. For content analysis, two researchers reached a consensus through discussion by scrutinizing the contents of each survey questionnaire. RESULTS A total of 10 survey tools from six countries were identified after a review of 1,476 records from the search results. Five survey tools (HINTS, HTS, ANHCS, NHIS, and HTHS) from the United States (U.S.) and each of one tool from European Union (E.U.), France, Germany, Israel, and Poland were identified. National institutes or individual researchers designed these surveys by using the items of the dichotomous or Likert scale. Telephone or online surveys were commonly used targeting the adult population (≥ 15 years of age). From the content analysis, the domains of the survey items were categorized as follows: health (overall health, lifestyle, and cancer), information (health information and patient medical records), and channel (offline and online). All categories encompassed behavioral and attitude dimensions. A theoretical framework—an Information-Channel-Health (ICH) structure—for HISB was proposed. CONCLUSIONS The results can contribute to the development and implementation of survey tools for HISB with integrated questionnaire items. This will help to understand HISB trends and enhance patient engagement in national healthcare.


Author(s):  
Courtney Waugh

Strategic planning documents are "key sites to institutional discourse" and reflect the public face of the library. This research explores the extent to which Neoliberal discourse permeates the strategic plans of three Canadian academic libraries, and examines how they are responding to global economic and political pressures. Through content analysis, the tension between libraries as a public good versus libraries as commodity is examined. Within this context, the disconnect between librarian core values and changing institutional values is also explored.Les documents de planification stratégique sont des « sites clés pour tout discours institutionnel » et reflètent le visage public d’une bibliothèque. Cette recherche tente de prendre la mesure dans laquelle le discours néolibéral imprègne les documents de planification stratégique de trois bibliothèques universitaires canadiennes, et examine comment ces institutions répondent à la montée et à la diversification des pressions économiques et politiques mondiales. En utilisant l'analyse de contenu et un regard critique, cette recherche exploratoire examine la tension entre la conception de la bibliothèque comme bien public et sa conception comme produit de marchandisation.


1997 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
André Gosselin ◽  
Jacques DeGuise ◽  
Guy Pacquette ◽  
Laplante Benoit

Abstract: Inspired by George Gerbner's method of cultural indicators, content analysis of fictional programs broadcast on Canada's eight largest television networks has indicated that the level of violence on Canadian television, although overall not as high as American television's violence content, reached comparable levels on occasion, particularly on the private networks. A survey conducted on a sample of university students provides evidence that television viewing affects beliefs concerning the level of violence in one's surroundings, even in a population of media-literate adults, although their level of fear does not seem to be influenced in the same way. Résumé: A l'instar de l'approche des indicateurs culturels de George Gerbner, une analyse de contenu des émissions dramatiques diffusées sur les huit plus grands réseaux de télévision au Canada démontre que le niveau de violence à la télévision canadienne, sans être globalement aussi élevé que celui observé aux États-Unis, atteint occasionnellement des niveaux comparables, surtout aux réseaux privés. Un sondage auprès d'un échantillon d'étudiants universitaires montre que l'écoute de la télévision a un effet sur les impressions qu'ont même des adultes formés aux médias à l'égard du niveau de violence dans la société, quoique la télévision ne semble pas influer sur leur niveau de peur de la même manière.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dangui Zhang ◽  
Weixin Zhan ◽  
Chunwen Zheng ◽  
Jinsheng Zhang ◽  
Anqi Huang ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Seeking online health information (OHI) has become a common practice globally. The information seekers could face health risks if they are not proficient in OHI literacy. The OHI-seeking behaviors and skills of Chinese college students, the largest proportion of college students in the world, are understudied. This study was aimed to describe OHI-seeking behaviors and skills of college students in Guangdong, China. Methods College students in the Guangdong province with OHI-seeking experience were invited via WeChat, QQ, and Sina Weibo using QR code posters and flyers for participation in this online anonymized questionnaire-based study. Data on demographics, OHI literacy, information resources, search approaches, and behaviors were collected. The relationship between perceived OHI literacy and high-risk behaviors was investigated by bivariate logistic regression analysis. Results Respondents were 1203 college students with a mean age of 20.6 years, females (60.2%), and undergraduates (97.2%). They sought health information via websites (20.3%), WeChat (2.6%), or both (77.1%). Baidu was the main search engine, and baike.baidu.com (80.3%), Zhihu.com (48.4%), and Zhidao.baidu.com (35.8%) were top three among 20 searched websites for information about self-care (80.7%), general health (79.5%), disease prevention (77.7%), self-medication (61.2%), family treatment (40.9%), drugs (37.7%), western medications (26.6%), hospitals (22.7%), physicians (21.4%), and Traditional Chinese Medicine (15.6%). Despite most respondents (78%) lacked confidence in the evidence quality and satisfaction with the results, only 32.4% further consulted doctors. Many (> 50%) would recommend the retrieved information to others. About 20% experienced hacking/Internet fraud. Cronbach’s alpha for the internal consistency of OHI literacy was 0.786. Bivariate logistic regression analysis showed that students who believed they can judge the evidence level of OHI were more likely to self-diagnose (OR = 2.2, 95%CI, 1.6–3.1) and look for drug usage (OR = 3.1, 95%CI, 1.9–5.0). Conclusions This study reveals Chinese college students’ heavy reliance on OHI to manage their own and others’ health without sufficient knowledge/skills to identify misinformation and disinformation. The apparent risky information-seeking behaviors of Chinese college students warrant the provision of regulated, accurate, and actionable health information; assurance of cybersecurity; and health information literacy promotion in colleges by concerned authorities.


2008 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Perryman

A Review of: Brown, Cecilia M. and Ortega, Lina. “Information-Seeking Behavior of Physical Science Librarians: Does Research Inform Practice?” College & Research Libraries (2005). 66:231-47. Objective – As part of a larger study exploring the information environments of physical science librarians (Ortega & Brown), the authors’ overall objective for this study is to profile physical science librarians’ information behaviours. The authors’ two-part hypothesis was that first, peer-reviewed journals would be preferred over all other sources for research dissemination, resembling the preferences of scientists, and second, that peer-to-peer consultation would predominate for practice-oriented decisions. Design – Mixed methods: survey questionnaire followed by citation and content analysis. Setting – Five internationally disseminated professional association electronic mailing lists whose readership comprised those with interests in science librarianship: the American Library Association (ALA) Science and Technology Section; the American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIST) Science and Technology Information Special Interest Group; the Special Library Association (SLA) Chemistry Division and its Physics-Astronomy-Mathematics Division; and the American Geological Institute Geoscience Information Society. Subjects – Seventy-two physical science librarians voluntarily responding to an online survey. Methods – A questionnaire was distributed to inquire about physical science librarians’ professional reading practices as well as their perceptions about the applicability of research to their work. Participants were asked to rank preferences among 11 resource types as sources supporting daily business, including personal communication, conference attendance, electronic mailing lists, and scholarly journals. Differences between the mean rankings of preferences were tested for significance by applying the Friedman test with p>0.0005. Journals identified most frequently were analyzed using the Institute for Scientific Information’s (ISI) Web of Science index and Ulrich’s Periodical Index to measure proportions of research and non-research citations, as well as the general topic areas covered by the journals. Next, content analysis was performed for the years 1995, 1997, and 2000 in order to characterize research methodologies used in the previously identified journals according to a previously tested schema (Buscha & Harter). Results from this portion of the study were compared with participants’ responses about journal usage. Main Results – Librarians reported using personal communication (both face-to-face and electronic mailing lists) more frequently as a means of information gathering than professional journals, Web sites, conferences, trade publications, monographs, or ‘other’ resources. Variations in responses appeared to correlate with years in the profession and in the respondents’ time in their current positions, although there are indications that the importance of all information resources to practice and research declines over time. The relative importance of resources is also shown in time spent reading journal literature, less than 5 hours per week for 86% of participants. Conclusion – For the first hypothesis, the authors found that unlike scientists, survey participants did not prefer research publications as vehicles for dissemination of their research results. For the second, librarians ranked peer-reviewed journals third in preference after personal communication and electronic mailing lists as sources of information supporting daily practice, supporting the second hypothesis that respondents would emulate the information use practices of mathematicians.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Purvendu Sharma

PurposeThe present research aims to introduce and understand the promising nature of destination evangelism in the context of social media-based tourism communities (SMTCs). Further, factors that influence evangelism and information-seeking behaviors on SMTCs are examined.Design/methodology/approachA conceptual model is developed that features an interplay of destination distinctiveness, destination evangelism, travel commitment and information-seeking engagement. Data were collected from 215 active users of SMTCs and analyzed using structural equation models.FindingsThe research findings indicate that destination distinctiveness and information-seeking positively lead to destination evangelism. Information-seeking is found to mediate the relationship between (1) destination evangelism and travel commitment and (2) destination evangelism and distinctiveness.Research limitations/implicationsThe research offers meaningful insights into exploring constituents of destination evangelism. The research also understands and highlights the critical role of information-seeking engagement about distinct destinations.Practical implicationsThis research highlights key areas to build, improve and inspire destination evangelism on SMTCs.Originality/valueThis study offers a fresh contribution to tourism literature by investigating destination evangelism and its drivers. This is explained by closely uniting vital research streams of evangelism, tourism and engagement. It further highlights the dual mediating role of information seeking, suggesting that these engagements are critical to evangelizing destinations.


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