Waiting for chiropody: contextual results from an ethnographic study of the information behaviour among attendees at community clinics

The importance of including contextual factors when studying information behaviour is illustrated using findings from a recent field study in which ethnographic methods and social network theory are used to investigate the flow of human services information (HSI) among nurses, the elderly and other individuals at community-based foot clinics. Four types of contextual factors are identified: physical environment, clinic activities, the nurse's situation, and the senior's situation. While each type of factor has particular implications for the participants' information behaviour, it is shown how the interaction of multiple factors led to the conceptualization of such notions as an information ground, which may be used for guiding further research on the flow of information in community settings. This concept of an information ground is further based on a social constructionist definition of human services information. The implications of the researcher's presence at the field site as an additional contextual factor are also discussed. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.