Describing the Information Seeking Behavior: An Investigation on Comparing Learning Models

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the rule and characteristics of academic users´ information seeking behavior, as well as primary factors which influencing satisfaction and behavior outcomes as consequences of the value of information seeking. To examine the users´ behavior, several learning models were adopted, such as Bush-Mosteller model, Bayesian model,, fictitious play and EWA model. We employ both qualitative and quantitative approaches to examine the phenomenon of information seeking. We tried to compare the consistence of different models on the basis of experimental data. In Nanjing University of Science and Technology, 120 students were randomly assigned to 3 different teams and provided different communicating environments when seeking same assign for two hour. The result of a series of confirmatory factor analyses reveals that users´ satisfaction and behavior outcomes had correlated factors with moderate to good reliability. The findings from model analyses showed that EWA are more adapted to the others.