COMPUTING PROFESSIONALS AND INFORMATION ABOUT DEVELOPMENTS IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

This paper reports the results of a survey of the methods used by computing professionals to keep up to date with developments in information technology. Information channels representing a range of formats and sources of information are studied The results support the contention that accessibility of an information channel is a more influential factor than the perceived importance of the channel in choices of methods used to keep up to date. Exploratory multivariate analyses indicate the existence of information gathering strategies, and that there is a relationship between strategies and difficulty experienced in keeping up to date.