Attitude towards Information: A Study of Social Scientists

Information user studies have largely focused on what is overt and noticeable. This research goes into the more important latent aspect viz., attitude to information. Working on a sample of social scientists this study presents not only a scale for measuring the attitude towards information, but also examines the personal and organizational attributes influencing the magnitude of attitude. The findings of this research points to the importance of attitudinal measurement in the user research. It seems to have an intrinsic worth which may go a long way in explaining the observed source use behaviour particularly among social scientists. The user resistance could be corrected by providing incentives facilitating, among other things, a change in their attitudinal disposition on information use which in turn has shown to induce overt source use behaviour.