Investigation of information encountering in the controlled research environment

Experimental research of opportunistic acquisition of information (OAI) is difficult to design due to the overall opacity of OAI to both the information users and to the researchers. Information encountering (IT) is a specific type of OAI where during search for information on one topic information users accidentally come across information related to some other topic of interest. Building on our prior descriptive investigation of IE, we developed a conceptual framework that explains IE as stopping of information seeking activities for a foreground problem due to noticing, examining, and capturing of information related to some background problem. With objective to evoke IE in users' information behavior and record users' actions during an IE episode, we created a controlled laboratory situation, intended to trigger participants' experience of IE during an information retrieval task. We report about the methodological challenges experienced in this effort and share lessons learned for future experimental studies of opportunistic acquisition of information. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.