• The Information World of Parents: A Study of the Use and Understanding of Information by Parents of Young Children

    Author(s):
    Christopher Walker (see profile)
    Date:
    2018
    Subject(s):
    Information behavior, Public health, Education, Information literacy
    Item Type:
    Thesis
    Institution:
    Leeds Beckett University
    Tag(s):
    parenting, Health information seeking behaviors, social class, Information behaviour, Everyday
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6KV9F
    Abstract:
    Recent decades have seen social change in attitudes towards parenting within the United Kingdom. During this time, parenting has received an unprecedented amount of attention from government through legislation and policy initiatives, as well as becoming a regular topic in the news media, television programmes and for book publishers. Running parallel to these changes has been the growing social normalisation of the internet. The consequence of this social change is that parents today, arguably, face greater pressures in terms of sifting and weighing the wide range of messages and information targeted at them. Despite this increased focus on parents and parenting, their everyday life information seeking (ELIS) has received comparatively little attention from library and information science. This thesis examines the ELIS of 33 parents of primary school aged children in Leeds, United Kingdom. The main contribution of this thesis is a substantive grounded theory (GT) which explains how parents look for, access and weigh information as part of their parental responsibility. The theory is framed within five GT categories: • GT category A: Being a parent (core category) • GT category B: Connectivity • GT category C: Trust • GT category D: Picture of Self • GT category E: Weighing This substantive theory makes a specific contribution to the library and information science (LIS) field by providing an up-to-date and unique view of parents’ information seeking. My research shows that parents search for information in their role of ‘being a parent’ and provides an explanation as to how a specific group of parents search for, access, and choose information to inform and support them in this role.
    Metadata:
    xml
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    6 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved
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