Professionals seeking data on the information needs of sociologists will find such studies difficult to locate. Very little research has been conducted with sociologists specifically as end-users of information systems, perhaps due to the difficult nature of defining this group of researchers. Sociologists often specialize and tend to create focused niches for themselves; sociologists specializing in adolescent deviance, for instance, may utilize different information sources and exhibit other types of information seeking behaviors than those studying public health initiatives.
Perhaps because of the broad nature of the field of sociology, the bulk of the literature describing sociologists as information seekers are studies that place sociologists under the wide umbrella of social scientists. Few would take issue with this user group falling under the general heading of social science; however, is it fair to assume that economists, who are commonly viewed as social scientists, exhibit the same information seeking patterns as sociologists? Certainly, further research would need to be conducted on the individual disciplines involved for us to tell. For now, a number of influential studies of the information needs and use of social scientists will suffice for a general understanding of how sociologists view and use information systems.
This review presents English language articles of studies conducted in the U.K., U.S., and Canada from the late 1960’s through 2001. It begins with review of the broadest studies to date, followed by comparative studies and ending with small specialized studies.
The most ambitious studies of social scientists’ information seeking behavior began in the late 1960’s at the University of Bath, UK, with the INFROSS (Information Requirements of Social Scientists) study. Over 1000 social science researchers throughout England were surveyed with regard to the methods used to locate information, information source preferences, and feelings toward search intermediaries and librarians (Line, 1971). To date no study has come close to the exhaustiveness of Line’s research; the results gathered from the Bath study, as it is often referred to, are a starting point for many social science user group studies (Hurych 1986; Slater 1988, 1990), and its findings are often tested in the context of more specialized studies (Folster 1989; Buttlar 1992; Nilsen 1998; Meho & Haas 2001). Later, in the 1980’s, The British Library sought an update to the INFROSS study, conducting a small, intensely qualitative study of information professionals and social scientists (Slater, 1988). The qualitative nature of Slater’s work is a good counterpart to the quantitative data found in the INFROSS study; the interviews conducted spawned a number of recommendations for change (Slater, 1990) which was just not feasible within the scale of the Bath studies.
It is within the British Library’s study that we first see some emphasis placed on online information services. While Line (1971) states that no major patterns could be detected in INFROSS that would be useful to information system design, Slater attempts to address user needs in highlighting her respondents’ desires for access to online services (Slater, 1998, 1990). In addition, a study devoted to online information seeking behavior at Northern Illinois University in 1986 applied generalizations gleaned from Line’s study – specifically, the idea that social science disciplines are considered to fall on a “hard” to “soft” continuum, and that the disciplines falling on the “softer” end of the scale are more likely to have “fuzzier” terminology (Line 1971; Hurych 1986) – to online searching. Hurych’s research, intending to “add an online dimension to the existing studies” (Hurych, 1986, p.163) shows that social scientists tend to use more online databases than researchers in other fields and ends with a brief conclusion that her investigation should aid librarians in their development of better pre-search interviews -- a good starting point for librarians and search intermediaries concerned with the chronic under use of library staff by social scientists (Line, 1971).
A more recent look at social scientists’ use of online services is found in an overview of databases found in DIALOG (Anderson, 1995). Anderson’s research shows a decrease in fee-based online searching with the growth of other electronic technologies such as CD-ROMs and locally mounted OPACs (Anderson, 1995, p.2), and mentions DIALOG’s recent deletion of databases specific to the social sciences. While certain databases are discontinued simply because their producers go out of business, Anderson notes that many are discontinued by DIALOG when they are deemed unprofitable, that is, they are found to be underused (Anderson, 1995). Although this finding is unsurprising as the information industry is one driven by profit, this information proves justifiable the concerns of Slater’s respondents who evinced ethical objections in their resentment of online services for “ ‘making you pay for information, which by law ought to be free’ “ (Slater, 1990, p.14).
To date, few comparative studies of social scientists as a user group have been conducted. In their study comparing the information seeking patterns of physical and social scientists, Ellis, Cox and Hall (1993) speculate that “part of the reason for the paucity of comparative studies of the two groups may be that various studies of information seeking differ so widely in aims, objectives and methods that genuine comparison of the results is virtually impossible” (Ellis, Cox & Hall, 1993, p.356). Certainly this holds true of the literature herein reviewed. The researchers used Ellis’s six step behavioral model for information seeking activity – starting, chaining, browsing, differentiating, monitoring, and extracting – to illustrate the homogeneity of information seeking behavior across disciplines. Perhaps not surprisingly, any differences found in activity between the two groups are downplayed, resulting in the conclusion that information seeking patterns of the physical scientists and the social scientists are not noticeably different (Ellis, Cox & Hall, 1993). For marked differences found in information use between social scientists, natural scientists, and humanists, albeit in the narrower context of online searching, Hurych’s quantitative analysis is a good starting point (Hurych, 1986). Also of note is Folster’s (1989) comparative study of information use by faculty and graduate students (both pre-preliminary and post-preliminary) of the social sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The results of the study show that there are no distinct differences in information use among the different levels of researchers, and in concordance with Line’s (1971) earlier findings, journal articles were the most favored information source, while online tools ranked as the least-favored (Folster, 1989).
The most recent studies of social scientists as information users focus on sources consulted in the context of the researchers’ area of study (Buttlar & Wynar 1992; Nilsen 1998; Meho & Haas 2001). Buttlar and Wynar (1992) surveyed scholars who have published in ethnic studies journals, and found that journal articles, monographs, government documents, library catalogs and newspapers were the most valued sources of information for this group. In addition, the five most important means for locating information were citations, abstracts or indexes in print format, bibliographies, library catalogs, book reviews, and discussion with colleagues. (Butlar & Wynar, 1992, p.24). Their results support the findings of INFROSS that social scientists rely heavily on journals and informal channels of information, and are more comfortable with print versus electronic resources (Line, 1971).
The studies of Nilsen (1998) and Meho & Haas (2001) focus more specifically on the usage of government statistics in social science research. Faculty studying the Kurds were the focus of Meho’s work, while Nilsen researched the use of Statistics Canada, the country’s central statistics agency, in light of large price increases and changes to electronic formats due to the Canadian government’s changes in information policy. Though the objectives of the two studied varied greatly, both had some surprising results. Meho’s results show that the methodology used in locating government statistics were quite similar to Buttlar and Wynar’s (1992) results in that colleagues, citations, and library catalogs were most frequently consulted. However, it was also found that most social scientists studying the Kurds were well aware of new information technology:
[Their] awareness of new information technology is not only evident by their knowledge and use of the Web and e-mail but also by their utilization of a wide range of other relevant electronic databases. More than 88% of the study participants indicated that they have used electronic resources in their research of the Kurds, including several core social science indexes and abstracts… (Meho & Haas, 2001, p.20).
This finding is of interest since all other social science user studies (Line 1971; Slater 1988, 1990; Folster 1989; Ellis, Cox & Hall 1993; Buttlar & Wynar 1992; Anderson 1995) show that social scientists are either unaware of or tend to shy away from online sources. Also surprising is that in Nilsen’s (1998) study the research concluded that price increases and format changes had no effect on the researchers’ use of Statistics Canada. Though researchers were unhappy with the increased in pricing, this did not limit their use of this source, perhaps because changing habitual work patterns may be too costly in terms of time and energy expended (Nilsen, 1998).
The literature reviewed herein are but mere examples of the breadth of information dealing with social scientists as users of information. The objective was to select for review a sampling of often-cited articles to aid the reader’s understanding of the research done in this realm to date. As one can see, the results of the largest and most influential study conducted with regard to social scientists, the INFROSS study, have weaved within almost every other study mentioned within the review. Although in the INFROSS study Line (1971) humbly claims that no generalizations should be made of his findings, he states that one of the strengths of the study is “that it does provide a mass of comparable data within a broad field, so that every finding can be related to other findings; it is of very little use to know that 75 percent of sociologists do something, unless one has some idea of what other people do” (Line, 1971, p.62).
Of important note is the fact that each study reviewed ranged widely in the number of participants, from over 1000 (Line, 1971) to as few as 20 (Meho &Haas, 2001). Certainly the findings of a smaller scale study may not be sufficient to be generalizable, but these smaller studies also tend to focus on more specific user groups, and may be considered a good starting place for additional research.
The trend in the literature seems to indicate that today, more studies are being conducted on more specific populations within the social sciences (Nilsen 1998; Buttlar & Wynar 1992; Meho & Haas 2001). It is surprising, then that no research has yet been conducted on the population of academic sociologists. The breadth of the discipline may be daunting to many researchers, but such a study would be extremely valuable to this community. For now, we must look toward the literature dealing with the broad category of social science; hopefully, future research will enable us to view sociologists as a single user group with information needs of its own.
Anderson, B. (1995). Fee-based online searching and social science research in traditional library settings. Behavioral & Social Sciences Librarian, 13(2), 1-11.
Buttlar, L. & Wynar, L. R. (1992). Cultural pluralism and ethnic diversity: Authors as information users in the field of ethnic studies. Collection Management, 16(3), 13-33.
Ellis, D., Cox, C., & Hall, K. (1993). A comparison of the information seeking patterns of researchers in the physical and social sciences. Journal of Documentation, 49(4), 356-369.
Folster, M. B. (1989). A study of the use of information sources by social science researchers. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 15(1), 7-11.
Hurych, J. (1986). After Bath: scientists, social scientists, and humanists in the context of online searching. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 12(5), 158-165.
Line, M. (1971). The information uses and needs of social scientists: An overview of INFROSS. In Anthony, L. J. (Ed.), Lines of Thought: Selected papers of Maurice B. Line (pp. 45-66). London: Clive Bingley, 1998.
Meho, L. I. & Hass, S. W. (2001). Information seeking behavior and use of social science faculty studying stateless nations: A case study. Library & Information Science Reasearch, 23, 5-25.
Nilsen, K. (1998). Social science research in Canada and government information policy: The Statistics Canada example. Library & Information Science Research, 20(3), 211-234.
Slater, M. (1998). Social scientists’ information needs in the 1980s. Journal of Documentation, 44(3), 226-237.
Slater, M. (1990). Applied social scientists in the United Kingdom: Information and communication problems. Behavioral & Social Sciences Librarian, 9(1), 5-20.