Research Question
What are the information behaviors of individuals during a crisis situation?
Pick a Case / Unit of Analysis
This study is about the information behaviors of occupants in a house that has been damaged by a tree during a severe thunderstorm in North Florida.
Case Description
This holistic single-case design case study’s goal is to test the information behavior in crisis model with a small localized crisis situation. The information behavior in crisis model integrates information resources, information behavior and needs of the storm-affected communities within the temporal stages of a natural disaster (Lopatovska & Smiley, 2014). An autoethnographic study was conducted during Hurricane Sandy informed the authors on the building of the model and its accompanying framework. This study of a North Florida household will help determine whether the model and its framework can be branched out or extended into small localized crisis situations and find possible avenues for future research in building a theory for crisis informatics. An important consideration of adopting a holistic design is the potential to shift from the original research question while conducting the study (Yin, 2003, p. 45). The adoption of an existing model may provide insurance against drift of focus.
Types of data to collect
There are three types of data to be collected for this study. The collection of real-time data in the form of a participant observer diary. A comparison data set will be provided by interviews with individuals that also experienced the event. Finally, data from external sources such as details about the environment, researcher, data collection, and analysis steps will provide a robust account of the case.
Types of analysis to complete
Content analysis will be completed by using the information behavior in crisis model and framework to code and interpret the data. The coding themes will mirror the themes used by Lopatovska and Smiley (2014) in order to provide consistency. The coding themes are information need, information behavior, and information source.
Alternative Design Possibilities
The findings might differ if this study used the same question but contained more participants, sites, and data sources. A factor to consider is that multiple-case designs are often preferred over single-case because the more cases collected during a study will increase the chance of success (Yin, 2003, p. 53). Also, the more data that is collected the greater the possibility to correctly identify themes. It is possible that the participant observer might have some idiosyncratic information behaviors that are not common among a more diverse population. The inclusion of more geographical regions will help provide a more general understanding of the information resources needed and are available during a natural disaster. It is possible that weather conditions in California might influence information behaviors differently than the ones identified in North Florida.
References
Lopatovska, I., & Smiley, B. (2014). Proposed model of information behaviour in crisis: The case of hurricane sandy. Information Research-An International Electronic Journal, 19(1).
Yin, R. K. (2003). Designing case studies. In Case study research: Design and methods (3rd ed., pp. 19-56). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.