Relation between Quantitative and Qualitative Measures of Information Use

Understanding how people use information and measuring information use are essential in the successful design and testing of information technologies. This study reports on the relation between selected quantitative and qualitative approaches of measuring the use of information in the context of making decisions. Four quantitative measures were developed: information access, information time, search redundancy, and time per access. Three qualitative constructs were developed addressing participant reports of the amount of information, the usability of the information, and the adequacy of the information. The context for the study is the choice of a health plan. A Windows-based system was developed with process-tracing capabilities to track participants' information search patterns. Analysis of variance and correlation analysis showed relations between the quantitative measure of information access and the qualitative measures of amount of information and between information time and one component of the adequacy of information. There was no relation between any of the quantitative measures of information use and people's reactions to the usability of the information. Analysis of background variables provided some additional insights into both the quantitative and qualitative measures of information use.