Framing of different types of information needs within simulated work task situations: An empirical study in the school context

Abstract

This paper reports a meta-evaluation of how to frame different types of information needs within simulated work task situations. This is done via an empirical study of teenagers and their teachers’ Internet information searching. Two sets of simulated work task situations were carefully designed to reflect verificative, conscious topical and muddled topical information needs of each group of test participants. The study shows that it is challenging to formulate verificative simulated work task situations and to incorporate curiosity in the muddled topical simulated work task situations. The results also show that the search behaviour of the two groups differs across the information needs, as expected, but also between the two groups, owing to the search strategy and attitude of the teenagers. This is seen by how fast they were at searching and assessing relevance, often using Google’s ‘picture search function’, and saving the reading in detail for later.