CITATION AND COPYRIGHT INFORMATION:
Cite as: Nilan, M. S., & Dervin, B. (1999). Beyond agency to structure: Moving quantitative Sense-Making to a focus on both societal structural arrangements and information seeking agency. The Electronic Journal of Communication [On-line serial] 9 (2, 3, & 4).
© The Electronic Journal of Communication (1999).

ABSTRACT:
Most applications of Sense-Making to the quantitative study of information seeking and use have only implicitly attended to issues of the nature of the power relationships within which actors find themselves in situated information seeking. The intent of the present study was to examine the utility of adding explicit actor assessments of power arrangements as predictors of information seeking behaviors. The two measures added here—derived from emphases of authors writing in the critical tradition—focus on actor assessments of own relative status and openness of communication in the information seeking situation. These two measures were added to a third predictor of information seeking situation movement state, the predictor that has been most used in quantitative Sense-Making studies of information seeking and use. The present study examined the extent to which these three predictors—situation movement state, perceived relative status, and perceived openness of communication—predicted separately and conjointly six measures of information seeking. Results showed that situation movement state explained the most variance but the two measures of power structures showed promise for inclusion in Sense-Making studies of information seeking. A fundamental assumption in this study was that actor assessments of power arrangements in particular situations are representative, at least in part, of structural conditions that persist across situations.

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OTHER MATERIALS BY THESE AUTHORS ON THIS WEB SITE:
For Nilan,
See:http://communication.sbs.ohio-state.edu/sense-making/AAauthors/authorlistnilan.html.
For Dervin,
See:  http://communication.sbs.ohio-state.edu/sense-making/AAauthors/authorlistdervin.html.