Cognition, Sources and Contributory Information of Documents in Writing a Research Proposal: A Longitudinal Case Study

摘要

The aim of the study is to analyse how students problem stages in writing the research proposal for a master's thesis are reflected in their choice of sources and access points to documents as well as in contributory information types in documents. It further explores how the access points to information are related to the relevance of the documents and contributory types of information in documents perceived by the students. The participants of the study were 11 students who attended a seminar for one term for preparing a research proposal for the master's thesis. The students were asked to make an IR search at the beginning, middle and end of the seminar. A pre- and post-search interview was conducted during each session. The students were asked to think aloud during the search session. The transaction logs were captured and the thinking aloud was recorded. Research and search diaries were also collected. The results show that there is a connection between the students' problem stages while writing a research proposal and means of identifying documents as well as sources for obtaining them. Also the problem stages differentiated the information types that the students perceived as contributory to their work. Moreover, the results revealed that certain pointers typically led the students to find certain types of contributory information.