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Introduction
Information Encountering (IE) was coined by Erdelez (1995) in her doctoral thesis and defined as: “a form of information acquisition that is not planned or anticipated. It is characterised by users’ low involvement or no involvement in looking for information that was acquired, and by a low expectation or no expectation that such information will be acquired (p. 3)”.
Encountering information (EI) built a knowledge base in the analogue environment, but it rose especially due to the interlinked environment via the World Wide Web. Studies have established that EI is as beneficial for users as purposefully sought information in competitive advantages and organisational thriving (Dixon, 2000; Dyer and Singh, 1998). It may result in getting advantageous knowledge base and its generation. Previously, researchers (e.g. Brown, 1999; Ellis et al., 1993; Krikelas, 1983; Lambert and Loiselle, 2007) focused on information behaviour without differentiating between purposive information seeking and unintentional encounters. However, IE has grabbed the attention of researchers for quite some time. The five-stage model of IE by Erdelez (2004) originated in the context of the USA culture as a result of the qualitative exploration. Later, the model was extended to the seven steps by Awamura (2006) in the context of the Japanese culture based on another qualitative exploration. Encountered Information sharing (EIS) is a closely related behaviour associated with IE. The need to measure the sharing behaviour of encountered information was identified by Erdelez (1995), but it remained unexplored till Erdelez and Rioux (2000) worked on sharing behaviour of encountered information. Sharing of the encountered information may result in a collective advantage, as it may create awareness, speed up the research process in organisations and provide fast solutions.
The present study has been designed to determine the IE and EIS behaviour of research students in the Pakistani culture, using a quantitative design taking a sample of research students enroled in MPhil (two year research degree after completing 16 years Master’s programme) and PhD (after completing 18 years) who often have to search information as a part of their research assignments, in an online environment.
Statement of the problem
The online environments, being dynamic, interactive and highly enriched with hyperlinks and multimedia, provide users with increased chances of IE and EIS. Studies have been...