=Paper=
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|title=A Diary Study of Information Needs Produced in Casual-Leisure Reading Situations
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-836/paper8.pdf
|volume=Vol-836
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==A Diary Study of Information Needs Produced in Casual-Leisure Reading Situations==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-836/paper8.pdf
A Diary Study of Information Needs Produced in
Casual-Leisure Reading Situations
Max L. Wilson Basmah Alhodaithi Michael Hurst
Future Interaction Technology Lab Future Interaction Technology Lab Department of Information Science
Swansea University, UK Swansea University, UK Loughborough University, UK
m.l.wilson@swansea.ac.uk basmah.alhodaithi@gmail.com m.a.hurst@lboro.ac.uk
ABSTRACT 2. RELATED WORK
Both information seeking and leisurely activities are
commonplace in people’s daily lives, but very little is know about The study of searching behaviour has long been embedded in the
searching behaviours outside of the work context. To study such history of library and information science, where searching is
leisurely information needs and subsequent searching, a diary presumed to be a goal-oriented research activity. This is
highlighted by the common definition that Information Seeking is
study was performed, focusing on the context of casual-leisure
reading. The week-long diary study with 24 participants was focused on the resolution of an information need [12] or
performed by a team of six graduate students. Reading was often knowledge gap [1]. Further, the common approach to describing
both an act of casual searching, as well as a motivator for tasks for empirical research, is named a ‘Work Task’ [2]. Despite
subsequent searching episodes, and around half were implying work-oriented scenarios, Work Tasks are described as
hedonistically or emotionally motivated. Casual searching often including non-work personal tasks too, but these tasks are still
began with topical or personal interests, but did not always typically goal and need-driven scenarios. Examples include
involve information needs. The findings confirm prior literature studies of everyday-life information seeking [18] and information
encountering [6], which relate to non-work contexts, but can still
on casual search, while providing new insights into these less-
be quite serious.
critical and experience-driven episodes of searching, for fun.
To understand non-work leisure time better, Stebbins introduced a
taxonomy containing three levels: serious-leisure, project-leisure,
General Terms and casual-leisure [22]. Serious leisure typically covers activities
Experimentation, Human Factors, Theory.
relating to committed hobbies, or volunteering outside of work
[9]. Project-leisure relates to extended but temporal efforts like
Keywords buying a car, planning a holiday, or researching family histories
Casual-leisure, Reading, Information Seeking [3]. These goal- and need-driven leisure scenarios could be easily
captured in Work Tasks. The third level, casual-leisure, relates to
activities often involved in play and relaxation, such as watching
1. INTRODUCTION television [4] or searching online [23], and much more. Based on
Although there has been decades of research into Information
their prior work, Elsweiler et al proposed a model of casual-
Seeking and Information Retrieval, very little has focused on the
leisure information behaviour [5] that highlighted some key
casual searching experiences of people outside of work. Research
differences between casual scenarios and Work Tasks. First, these
by Harris and Dewdney in 1994 indicated that 95% of 3,100
scenarios were often driven by hedonistic needs, rather than
surveyed information seeking studies had focused on work-driven
information needs. Consequently, searching often began with
tasks [8]. Yet Pew Research found that searching simply for fun,
ephemeral or absent information needs. Further, success in
and often for no particular reason, is one of the most popular
meeting their hedonistic needs, did not necessarily involve
online pastimes and counts for a significant portion of internet
successfully finding information and results. Hedonistic needs
traffic [17]. Elsweiler et al suggest that casual, leisurely searching
include factors such as affect, novelty, social relationships, and
situations differ significantly to work or project driven tasks in
enjoyment [10], where O’Brien, for example, studied their
that they produce search experiences that often begin without a
importance in online shopping experiences [14].
given information need. Further, their investigations indicated that
actually finding relevant information is typically less important Many have also studied reading as a casual or pleasurable activity.
than having fun [5]. Such scenarios involve passing time and Early work by Pjetersen converted observed book-finding
relaxing, can be driven by the need to recover from a bad day, or behaviour into a naturalistic library-style search interface [16],
to have fun with other people. Casual searching includes scenarios helping people to browse in different modes. In 1980, Spiller
such as window shopping, browsing eBay, and delving into found that 46% of library loans (n=500) were based upon
Wikipedia. To further investigate such casual-leisure searching browsing and 54% on known authors [21]. During a much smaller
experiences in more detail, this paper describes a diary study of (n=12) qualitative study in 2011, however, Ooi and Liew saw
searching for fun, performed in the context of casual reading. participants often only using the library to retrieve books that they
had already selected in everyday life [15]. Further, along with the
introduction of e-readers and tablet devices, the nature of reading
Presented at Searching4Fun workshop at ECIR2012. Copyright © 2012 in casual episodes is changing. Research continues to highlight
for the individual papers by the papers' authors. Copying permitted only that increasing numbers of people perform their reading online or
for private and academic purposes. This volume is published and through digital mediums [11, 20].
copyrighted by its editors.
3. DIARY STUDY during this process. The six researchers then returned to their
The main goal of this study was to investigate the information diary entries to re-examine them in the context of the final codes.
seeking behaviours performed in the context of casual-leisure
reading. Prior work by Ross found that people who read for
4. RESULTS
pleasure often encounter new information, without having an Over the course of the week, most participants recorded around 1
existing related information need [19]. Here, six researchers, as or 2 diary entries per day, producing around 120 usable entries in
part of their post-graduate studies, coordinated a diary study of total. To provide an overview, approximately 20% of reading was
casual-leisure information behaviour. The methodology used was performed with physical paper objects (books, newspapers, and
similar to the diary study performed by Elsweiler et al [4], which magazines), with the remaining being split between e-readers and
studied information needs produced while watching television. In mobile devices (around 30%) and laptops and PCs (50%).
Reading content included: News (around 45%), email (20%),
total 24 participants took part in the diary study for one week.
Participants were recruited by the six researchers using snowball- magazines (15%), and fiction (10%). In terms of physical
sampling; participants were primarily young adults in their 20s. surroundings, around 40% of entries were produced in work
contexts, with the remaining performed in home environments.
Participants were given a small portable physical diary, so that it Figure 2 shows the model developed from the analysis, which is
could be used in both digital and physical contexts; an example is described further below.
shown in Figure 1. Participants were asked to fill out one entry
1. Reading Motivations
page per information need or searching episode that was initiated a. Hedonistic or Emotional
during a period of reading undertaken for self-motivated b. General knowledge interests
pleasurable reasons. To support continued participation, the i. Interest driven
participants were managed by one of the six researchers. Each ii. Carer
participant had regular contact with their researcher, including but iii. In-the-know
not limited to: an initial interview, an informal interim discussion, iv. Decision
and a final debriefing interview. 2. Searching Motivations
a. Information need
b. Personal scoping
c. General topical
d. Decision-making
3. Search focus
a. Factual information
b. Background information
c. Object related information
4. Source of Information
a. Paper sources
b. Social networks
c. Expert sites
d. Generic sites
Figure 2: The developed coding scheme.
4.1 Reading motivations
Reading material can be considered a source of information itself.
Consequently, our study observed reading as being both the act of
Figure 1: An example diary; a bound set of A5 card. casual searching, and as a source motivating separate casual
search episodes. This section focuses on the former, where casual
The diary consisted of a mix of open and closed questions. After reading is itself sometimes an act of casual search.
logging the time and date, participants were asked to indicate the
Although around 50% of casual reading episodes were driven by
type of material they were reading and their environment, such as
hedonistic or emotional needs, around 50% were driven by the
home, work, library, coffee shop, etc. Participants were then asked
participants’ general knowledge interests. Examples of hedonistic
to describe a) what they wanted to search for, and b) why they
or emotional motivations included “to pass time”, “to help cope
wanted to search. Participants were then asked to identify how
they then performed the search, if at all. with things”, and “to relax after my day”. Although following
knowledge interests could also be seen as a pleasurable pastime,
3.1 Analysis the knowledge-driven entries also occasionally broached the
Although some summative information was collected about the concepts of ‘project leisure’, such as reading about possible
nature of the reading scenario, a Grounded Theory analysis [7] holiday destinations, and ‘serious leisure’, such as reading around
was performed to systematically extract key elements from the a hobby domain. The majority of the knowledge-drive situations
information needs and information seeking described in the open described by participants, however, were casual episodes relating
text fields. The six researchers individually transcribed their to a project-leisure interest, rather than active periods of research
diaries and initially coded them for key points. As a group, and in or work. One participant, for example, was reading about a
collaboration with the supervising author, these codes were neighbourhood area as they were soon to be “moving into a new
discussed, analysed, and configured into affinity diagrams, using house”.
post-it notes and a whiteboard. These codes, and the relationships While the hedonistic and emotional scenarios were pretty uniform
captured in the affinity diagrams, were discussed, referring back in motivation, we further classified the casual knowledge-driven
to example diary entries, until they stabilized and all researchers reading scenarios into four types: Interest driven, Carer, In-the-
were in agreement. Entries that challenged the evolving know, and Decision-oriented. Interest driven were those casual
definitions and affinity diagrams were frequently considered bouts of reading relating to a hobby or temporary interest.
Examples included “information about buying a car abroad” and wanted to “check the weather for the weekend” in order to make
“information on fixing my PC”. For a participant who was a “new some plans.
fan of J.K. Rowling’s novel series”, they were “reading about the
latest Harry potter sequel”, which was due to be delivered. 4.3 Focus of information sought
The information that people sought in these casual scenarios could
Carers were those that were reading information that has personal
be largely broken into three types: factual information,
or emotional relevance. Carers often read news, for example,
background/overview information, and object related information.
about zones with natural disasters, or places and events relating to
Factual information, of course, related to specific information
their childhood, or to distant friends. One participant cited
needs, and were often represented by factual content, such as
choosing to read “more information on tsunamis”, while another
dates, prices, locations, etc. One participant was searching for
had a personal interested in the unrest in the Bahrain.
“yesterday’s lottery results”. Background and overview
In-the-know readers were those that casually monitored general information was typically sought in general topical situations and
knowledge information sources, including news, to be aware of interest-driven reading, such as “wales football information”.
current events and new technology. Example diary entries Finally, object related information pertained to places, people, and
included a participant who “read about the 2011 budget meeting events with one participant suggesting they were “searching for
in today’s paper” in order to get “updates on current budget more about Mississippi”. Such information was often sought by
meetings”. Another participant said “I wanted to know what was caring readers, or personal-scoping searchers.
happening while I was asleep”. In-the-know readers often
recorded more frequent small reading sessions, than extended 4.4 Sources of information
periods like those with hedonistic or emotional motivations. The diary study also asked participants to describe how they
Finally, decision makers were those that read up on interest areas sought information during episodes of casual searching, motivated
related to things like casual purchases, such as new movie releases by their casual reading. Perhaps correlating with the large
or new cameras. In another example, a participant wrote that they percentage of our participants who read using digital devices,
were reading “reviews of the movie ‘Inception’”, because they much of the information was sought online. Figure 3 highlights
were “planning for a movie at the weekend”. that some participants sought their information using additional
physical paper resources, often including those who performed
4.2 Motivations for Searching for fun additional topical interest reading. Of those that used the internet
The casual reading, recorded in our diary study, often created to search, many consulted their social network, especially those
separate episodes of casual searching. These episodes were driven establishing personal scope with the information. The remainder
by encountering information that created an Anomalous State of typically referred to news sources and Wikipedia articles, or
Knowledge [1], but did not always relate to a direct information generally searching the web for related pages. Several participants
need. Some ASKs also led to additional smaller bouts of casual- described themselves as searching for websites with authority on a
interest reading, rather than searching. The four identified key topic, such as one participant who went to the UK government
motivations for additional searching or reading, were: information website for “…census information. To find out the deadlines”.
need, personal scoping, general topical, and decision-making.
Information need examples included those that identified a clear
piece of information they would like to know in order to continue
reading. These specific information needs often consisted of
dictionary definitions, such as one participant who was looking
for “the meaning of the word ‘oakum’” because they did not know
what it meant.
Personal scoping motivations related to participants who
encountered information that was somehow related to their history
or personal life. The participant interested in the Bahrain also
provides a good example here. Personal scoping examples also
often led to searching behaviour within one’s own information,
such as email or media collections, or within social networks.
Typically, personal scoping was aimed at establishing, or
remembering, the connection they had with the information they
had just encountered. Figure 3: Methods used for casual searching.
General topical searching was motivated by discovering
something of novel interest, and often initiated casual learning
5. DISCUSSION
without a specific information need. One participant, another This research has continued the recent interest in investigating
casual searching behaviour that people undertake for fun. We
example of a Carer, wanted to “know more about children with
aimed to further investigate the findings of researchers like
dementia” after they “read [an] article in [the] newspaper about a
9yr girl with this disease”. Elsweiler et al [5], and the model of casual-leisure searching
behaviour they produced. In line with their model, our study
Finally, decision-makers were those searching when motivated by found that around half of the casual reading episodes were
the need to make a new decision. Often relating to a topical motivated by hedonistic or emotional needs, rather than
interest, such decision-making motivations included deciding if an information needs. For those that engaged in searching behaviour,
activity was something they would want to do, or to learn more some did aim to find specific information, either facts or
about in future casual reading. One participant said that they information connecting what they had found to their own lives,
while others began additional reading or topical browsing without
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