Jane Morgan-Daniel@JMorganDaniel

The Information Needs of Occupational Therapy Students: A Case Study

Choosing the topic

What is an OT?

Methodology

Data collection

Data analysis

Findings

Lessons learned

Overview

Why information needs?

- What users say they need vs what we think they need

- Meeting users’ changing expectations

- User-oriented & evidence- based service development

- Innovative responses to internal & external change

Choosing the topic…

Why OT students?

- Personal & professional connection to the topic

- Occupational Therapy is a relatively new profession

- 31 British universities now offer OT degree courses

- Increased government support for student OTs

- Literature gap

Choosing the topic…

Final research question

What are the information needs of Occupational

Therapy students and how do these needs

contribute to library use and non-use?

What’s an Occupational Therapist?

Research objectives

Ascertain OT students’ motivators for information-seeking

Determine which information sources are used and why

Establish the barriers inhibiting the satisfaction of information needs

MethodologySystems theory

- Meaning can be objectively determined

- An information need is a rational decision that a piece of information is required to solve a problem

- Information needs are best met through efficient Information Retrieval systems

Which research tradition?

MethodologyUser-centred

- Meaning is influenced by personality, demographic background & occupation

- An information need is subjective & contextual

- Information needs are best met through understanding users’ perceptions of reality within a specific setting

Which research tradition?

MethodologyCase study

- In depth exploration of local perceptions

- Intensive examination of contextual relationships between the occupational environment & students’ information needs

- Detection of associative patterns

Research strategy

Methodology- Non-probability purposive

sampling

- Inclusion criteria: location, profession, specialisation, career stage, pattern of learning

- Key informant encouraged faculty collaboration

- One institutional case

- Final sample of 27 students

Sampling procedure

Methodology Research design

Mixed methods

Qualitative- Examination of perceptions,

opinions & attitudes

- Unanticipated themes arose inductively

Quantitative- Illuminated patterns within

the qualitative data

- Enabled theory-building

Data collection- Self-completion questionnaire

- Open and closed questions

- Administered via email by a faculty member

- Questionnaires were returned as an email attachment

- Data was copied into Excel and anonymised

What information services would your ideal library

provide?

How do you evaluate whether research evidence

is useful for a specific patient case?

While on placement, what clinical tasks prompt you to

look for information?

While on placement, what non-clinical tasks prompt

you to look for information?

Open questions

On placement, have you looked for information to

help with…

When writing academic assignments, have you looked for information to

help with…

On placement, who are you likely to approach with a question about patient

care…

Closed questions

When researching a clinical question, do you use any of

the followingpoint-of-care tools…

Data analysis

Thematic analysis (qualitative data)

Non-parametric descriptive analysis (quantitative data)

FindingsObjective oneAcademic assignments, EBP, developing workplace skills

Objective twoClinical colleagues, textbooks, search engines, e-journals, bibliographic databases

Objective threeTraining gaps, no awareness, librarians’ limited knowledge of OT, perceived inaccessibility & unavailability of resources

Recommendations

- Increase awareness of Occupational Therapy as a distinct profession

- Extend library opening hours- Offer regular user training- Improve availability &

accessibility of OT related print & e-resources

- Targeted publicity of relevant library services & resources

Lessons learned

Information needs case studies are a manageable, useful and enjoyable topic for a dissertation.