Spanning information behaviour across the stages of a learning task : Where do personality and approach to studying matter?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of personality (intellectual curiosity, conscientiousness and negative emotionality) and approach to studying (deep, strategic and surface) on students’ learning-related information behaviour in inquiry tasks. Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from 219 senior high school students with the use of three questionnaires. Findings – The findings showed that students’ individual traits influenced different aspects of their learning-related information behaviour from information need to information use. Research limitations/implications – The results were based on survey data. Reliability issues with the scales are discussed. In future research qualitative data would enrich the understanding of the phenomena. Practical implications – The results are informative for teachers and librarians who guide students in inquiry tasks. Originality/value – The study spanned learning-related information behaviour across the whole inquiry process: from task construction through task performance to task completion. The findings showed that individual traits were particularly influential at the task completion stage, that is on information use.