Beyond Categories: A Structural Analysis of the Social Representations of Information Users' Collective Perceptions on 'Relevance'

• Published in: Journal of information science theory and practice 2013, 1(2), , pp.16-35
• Main Authors: Ju, Boryung, O'Connor, Daniel O.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Analysis; Core-periphery analysis; Definitions; Information professionals; Information users' collective perceptions; Relevance; Similarity analysis; Social Representations Theory; Structural analysis; User behaviour; 문헌정보학
• ISSN: 2287-9099; 2287-4577
• DOI: 10.1633/JISTaP.2013.1.2.2

Relevance has a long history of scholarly investigation and discussion in information science. One of its notable concepts is that of ʼuser-basedʼ relevance. The purpose of this study is to examine how users construct their perspective on the concept of relevance; to analyze what the constituent elements (facets) of relevance are, in terms of core-periphery status; and to compare the difference of constructions of two groups of users (information users vs. information professionals) as applied with a social representations theory perspective. Data were collected from 244 information users and 123 information professionals through use of a free word association method. Three methods were employed to analyze data: (1) content analysis was used to elicit 26 categories (facets) of the concept of relevance; (2) structural analysis of social representations was used to determine the core-periphery status of those facets in terms of coreness, sum of similarity, and weighted frequency; and, (3) maximum tree analysis was used to present and compare the differences between the two groups. The overall findings identify the core and periphery concepts of relevance and their relationships in terms of coreness, similarity, and weighted frequency.