Koya, K., Chowdhury, G. and Green, E. (2024) Young informal carers' information needs communicated online: professional and personal growth, finance, health and relationships. Journal of Information Science, 50 (3). pp. 738-750. ISSN 0165-5515
Abstract
Young informal carers (YICs) are non-professional young individuals providing care and support in various forms, usually to immediate family members, afflicted from a diverse range of both long- and short-term health conditions. Although there is significant knowledge about the information needs of adult carers in general, information needs and information seeking characteristics of the YICs’ community are understudied and are different. This study aims to identify the information needs of YICs communicated over the Internet and understanding their information seeking characteristics through a three-stage qualitative content analysis of posts written by YICs on two notable Internet forums. The analysis of 323 posts dated between March 2010 and April 2019 finds YICs’ needs are categorised by two types of online expression of needs, situational and information. Situational needs are illustrations of current difficult conditions and information needs are direct requests for information. Under situational and information needs, we identify four types of needs expressed: personal and professional growth, health (self and caree), finance and relationships. In addition, the findings indicate 94.36% posts in the sample as situational needs, which depict the uncertainty experienced by YICs under caring circumstances. The findings can assist government organisations and charities by improving the indexing of advice pages of their websites appropriate to the YICs’ search words, better availability of information and advertising, in addition to building quality mobile applications or digital support tools.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Authors/Creators: |
|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2022 The Author(s). This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). |
Keywords: | Digital health; information needs; information retrieval; information seeking; information technology; young informal carers |
Dates: |
|
Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Information School (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 20 Jul 2022 15:49 |
Last Modified: | 03 Jun 2024 11:23 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | SAGE Publications |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1177/01655515221136829 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:189267 |