Discovering Information Behavior in Sense Making: I. Time and Timing

This study used the methods of ethnography of commuwork planning process (WPP). In short, the interest was nication to explore the information behavior in sense in discovering how the individuals separately and in conmaking of participants in the annual work planning of a sort made sense of their situation and in making sense unit of a public agency. To capture the dynamic time how they defined, sought, and used information. aspects of the work-planning task, the study continued There are many choices in conducting and reporting over three annual iterations of this work-planning process. The term sense making is used to convey the partisuch a study. Research is a creative process that builds cipants’ characterization of their information behavior. on a foundation of interests, ideas, anomalies, questions, This article explores the sense making that took place and intuitions; takes advantage of opportunities; and from the point of view of time and timing. The analysis works around barriers and constraints. Research is also a revealed broad patterns of repetitive action that structured the work-planning process and limited or focused struggle to balance the necessity for summary and reducfuture action. Data was repeatedly collected early in the tion with the need to communicate enough about methods annual process, requiring subsequent and repeated upand interpretations to allow readers to judge, while, hopedating and verification. A computer database of project fully, encouraging them to develop their own insights. information focused data collection and processing on The research process itself is framed by the decisions that details that were never used and neglected others that required independent data collection, processing, and researchers make regarding their questions of concern and display. Such findings suggest the role that time plays the methods that support investigation of those questions. in capturing meaning from data that has a time value. The interaction of questions and methods is influenced Understanding of the role of time suggests some possiby decisions of focus, situation, duration, and tempo. ble approaches for improving information management and the design of information systems. One important research design and analysis issue involves the perspectives that guide research. In studying the role of information in sense making a single perspecIntroduction tive seemed limiting. Different insights may be gained by looking broadly at communicative events and how they The research reported here focuses on sense making fit together over time versus focusing on the sense-making and the associated information behavior of participants mechanisms and information behavior of people interin a work-planning task. As the organization under study acting during communicative events or studying individwas a public agency subject to annual appropriations, the ual participants. In the analysis of the data and the retask was performed on an annual cycle that governed the porting of the findings here, there is an emphasis on buildpace and tempo of the effort. Data collection persisted ing bridges between existing theory and empirical over three of these annual cycles. By selection, the study findings and the development of new conceptions and did not focus on a particular information system. Rather, the emphasis was on the people involved, the situation theoretical descriptions. New insights that come out of of their involvement, the resources and rules they emresearch are strengthened when their relationship to the ployed, the actions they instituted, and how information work of others is considered. Thus, themes identified in came into play as the participants moved through the past studies are held up for examination in this study. The difference in this study is that the focus is on the information behavior of people as they create meaning Received June 27, 1996; revised January 27, 1997; accepted February and make sense, rather than on the stuff that we label 21, 1997. information. Whenever a researcher studies the role of information q 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.