Background/Context: Community colleges are positioned as a cost-effective way for students to complete the first two years of a bachelor's degree, yet informational barriers to the transfer process are well documented. To transfer, students must overcome informational constraints, navigate bureaucratic hurdles, and resolve conflicting requirements…

This paper reports the findings of a survey administered to a large academic university student population, assessing students' self-reported motivations, difficulties, and methods used in finding and using financial information. Results discussed include information types and sources students consult for financial information. The survey also…

Online consumer health information (OCHI) is being used at an unprecedented rate, and this trend is expected to continue. Most people have used OCHI, and many may have seen the outcomes of this use (either positive or negative or both). Education and income, as indicators of socioeconomic status, are important contextual factors influencing OCHI…

This paper reports an investigation of assessing students' information literacy (IL) in a naturalistic classroom environment by using a set of rubrics. A total of 72 lessons from 15 classrooms in Hong Kong were examined. Results indicate that the rubric is generally valid and usable in assessing students' IL skills but three more attributes which…

A study of attitudes related to varied information exposure styles. (CH)

Reporters appear to fall into three types according to the way in which they evaluate the credibility of their sources. All types demand corroboration, but they differ on the significance of intuition. (RL)

Concludes that open-minded persons attend to the content and implications of a message while close-minded persons attend to the surface quality of information and to the reputation of the source. (RL)

Evaluators often assume that outcome studies assessing agency effectiveness should provide the most relevant data for decision makers who must form judgments about treatment in order to make policy, program, and clinical decisions. Yet evaluators have found that decision makers often fail to use results of evaluation studies. (Author/CTM)

In three experiments, undergraduates evaluated student performance based on two sources of information differing in variability: test scores and grades. Differential weighting occurred only when instructions linked variability to reliability. It was concluded that evaluators will not ordinarily use relative variability of scores as an index of…

Fifty women enrolled in an urban Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) program were interviewed about their use of the mass media and the public library for useful information, preferences in the use of mass media, and their attitudes about source credibility. A 23-item interview guide is appended. (25 references) (EJS)

Describes a study in New Zealand that examined the information behavior of people in daily life contexts. Results showed how users' expectations of the usefulness of information sources varied by gender and source characteristics, including accessibility, trustworthiness, and reliability. Suggests ways to encourage use of formal information…