Understanding The Information-Seeking Behaviors And Credibility Evaluation Practices Of Graduate Researchers During Web-Based Scholarly Information Retrieval: A Phenomenological Study
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21617537Keywords:
Information-Seeking Behavior, Credibility Evaluation, Web Information Retrieval, Graduate Researchers, PhenomenologyAbstract
Web-based scholarly retrieval has become the primary route through which graduate researchers build knowledge, yet the abundance, heterogeneity, and machine-mediation of today’s web make locating and trusting sources newly difficult. This study explores the lived experience of that work. Using a descriptive (Husserlian) phenomenological design, it examines how graduate researchers describe their information-seeking behaviors, how they evaluate source credibility, what meanings and tensions characterize the experience, and how generative artificial intelligence is reshaping both. Data will be generated through in-depth semi-structured interviews, a concurrent think-aloud retrieval task, and review of participant-supplied search artifacts, with a criterion-purposive sample analyzed through Colaizzi’s seven-step method. This paper presents the Introduction and Methodology and the complete research instrument. It contributes a first-person, meaning-centered account intended to inform information-literacy instruction, academic search design, and doctoral supervision in the generative-AI era.
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