Children's information seeking in coping with daily-life problems: An investigation offifth- and sixth-grade students

摘要

Researchers have increasingly paid attention to the personal and emotional growth of youth. However, littleresearch has examined how exactly young people use or seek information for their personal developmentand growth. The primary goal of this study, therefore, was to explore the students' use of "informationseeking" to cope with their day-to-day personal stressors and problems. The sample consisted of 641children in fifth- and sixth-grade classrooms from an urban public elementary school in Taiwan. Data werecollected through semistructured, open-ended surveys. Both quantitative and qualitative methods wereemployed to analyze the data. This study found that in coping with daily-life problems, nearly two-thirds ofthe participating children would seek information; that sixth graders were more likely to do so; and thatgender did not make information seeking more (or less) probable in this coping context. Findings alsorevealed some major reasons for children's information seeking in this coping context, for example, to solveproblems, to escape, and to find a transition. Finally, five major different information seeking behaviorsrelated to coping emerged from the findings: information seeking for problem solving, information seekingto escape, information seeking for a transition, information seeking to change mood, and informationavoidance, which can be used as a platform to develop an explanatory and possibly predictive framework forfuture studies.