Spanning information behaviour across the stages of a learning task: Where do personality and approach to studying matter?

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of personality (intellectual curiosity, conscientiousness and negative emotionality) and approach to studying (deep, strategic and surface) on students’ learning-related information behaviour in inquiry tasks.

Data were collected from 219 senior high school students with the use of three questionnaires.

The findings showed that students’ individual traits influenced different aspects of their learning-related information behaviour from information need to information use.

The results were based on survey data. Reliability issues with the scales are discussed. In future research qualitative data would enrich the understanding of the phenomena.

The results are informative for teachers and librarians who guide students in inquiry tasks.

The study spanned learning-related information behaviour across the whole inquiry process: from task construction through task performance to task completion. The findings showed that individual traits were particularly influential at the task completion stage, that is on information use.