| This study examined multiple pregnancy as an information-seeking context and analyzed the information needs, information sources, and information practices described by pregnant women and pregnancy books. Data came from published pregnancy texts and in-depth interviews with 19 women pregnant with twins. Five research questions considered: the active and incidental forms of information seeking present in women's accounts; the roles of different kinds of information sources, in particular those with relevant professional training (e.g., doctors) or experiential knowledge (e.g., other mothers of twins); the ways in which women described information sources as (a) authoritative and (b) helpful; and the ways that temporal elements of pregnancy related to information seeking.; A constructivist discourse analysis (Potter 1996) of texts and interview transcripts revealed several findings. Rather than consistently describing one kind of information source to be authoritative in a specific area of knowledge, pregnant women used a variety of discursive techniques to reinforce or undermine the authority of different types of information sources. Helpfulness was related to but not equivalent to authority. Women described situations in which non-authoritative sources could provide help. The temporal dimension of pregnancy as a transition served both as a barrier and as a spur to women's information seeking.; A two-dimensional model of the information-seeking process considers the ways that active and incidental modes of information practice relate to different stages of the information-seeking process. Four modes of information practice are described: active seeking, active scanning (e.g., browsing), monitoring the context (e.g., reading the newspaper with no information seeking intent), and information seeking by proxy (e.g., being told something or being referred to an information source through another person). These four modes were analyzed as they occurred in women's descriptions of two stages of the information process: making connections with information sources and communicating with information sources.; Several characteristics specific to the context (e.g., the visibility of the pregnant woman as an information seeker) affected women's information seeking. In addition, several characteristics were identified that might occur in other information-seeking contexts (such as the use of active seeking and active scanning to overcome communication barriers). |
