Review of Kuhlthau's Article "An uncertainty principle for information seeking"

Kuhlthau defined uncertainty state as “a cognitive state that commonly causes affective symptoms of anxiety and lack of confidence.” She also commented that “uncertainty and anxiety can be expected in the early stages of the ISP” The ISP model has six stages:

q  Initiation, when a person becomes aware of a lack of knowledge or understanding

q  Selection, when a general area or topic is identified

q  Exploration, when inconsistent, incompatible information is encountered, and uncertainty, confusion, and doubt frequently increase;

q  Formulation, when a focused perspective of the problem is formed, and uncertainty diminishes as confidence begins to increase;

q  Collection, when information related to the focused problem is gathered,

q  Presentation, when the search is completed with a new understanding of the problem.

Kuhlthau stated that “affective symptoms of uncertainty, confusion and frustration are associated with vague, unclear thought about a topic or question” I would assume it as a natural state at the beginning of any task. I believe that any information seeker starts his/her search with an uncertainty due to the lack of understanding, knowledge, information resources, and a gap in meaning. However, Kuhlthau found that in the early stages of her ISP there is a redundancy corollary. Based on her findings, an information seeker starts the search with uncertainty, but he/she may complete the task with redundant information or unique information, where redundant information matches what the person already knows, and unique information is new knowledge and does not match the person’s background. She noted that “too much redundant information leads to boredom, whereas too much unique information causes anxiety” and when the redundancy increases the uncertainty will increase.

These findings highlight the importance of the level of user’s experience. I believe the level of experience plays a role in diminishing uncertainty. I consider uncertainty level may increase if the information seeker has less experience, and it may decrease for a user with more experience. Also, I believe when information seeker has a complex task, the level of uncertainty will increase. In regard with these assumptions, Kuhlthau stated that “the ISP and associated issues of uncertainty, complexity, and construction have not been formally studied in the context of the information worker.” Therefore, task complexity and work experience in the ISP model are significant factors that need to be further investigated.

Source:

Kuhlthau, Carol C. 1998. An uncertainty principle for information seeking: A qualitative approach. In Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, 355-368. New York: Marcel Dekker. [vol. 62]