Table 1
Nahl, Kuhlthau, and Dervin:
Key Concepts of Three
Complementary User-Centered Methodologies
Nahl's Self-Witnessing
Behavioral Model |
Kuhlthau's Diagnosis/
Intervention Orientation |
Dervin's Sense-Making
Communication Theory |
| The Main Question |
| What users feel, think, and do during an information session or task |
What stages users go through and how to assist them in the information seeking process |
How users assimilate information and apply it to their life situation |
| The Main Answer |
| Instructing lifelong novices to acquire integrated behavioral self-modification habits |
Diagnosing user problems and intervening with particular information services at the appropriate stage |
Empowering users by facilitating information transfer within society |
| Key Concepts |
- Integrated ACS information unit
- Self-witnessing method
- Affective micro-information skills
- Teaching self-regulatory information speech acts
- Modifying self-efficacy beliefs of searchers
- Planning user-based behavioral objectives
- Lifelong novices and information literate novices
|
- Constructivist personality theory
- Searching is seeking meaning
- Longitudinal stages as a process approach
- Attention to affective and cognitive needs
- Overcoming uncertainty and information anxiety
- Zones of intervention for information services
- Information counseling
|
- Constructivism/ Communitarianism
- Information as clay vs. brick
- Observer vs. user constructs
- User-based user categories
- Relativistic information framework
- Searching is filling an information gap
- Knowledge is information transfer
- Information exchange as a communicative act
|
From: Diane Nahl, An Integrated Theory of Information Behavior:
Taxonomic, Psychodynamic, Ethnomethodological. Spring 1996.