Everyday life information seeking behaviour of urban homeless youth
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Date
2013-03
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, CA
Abstract
Youth homelessness, or the issue of street children, is a growing phenomenon in cities across
the world, including Sub
-
Saharan Africa.
Homeles
s youth,
like all adolescents, deserve relevant
information
for successful transition to adulthood and for mastery of the challenges of
homelessness.
The pre
-
requisite for efficient provision of quality information services to any
group is knowledge and un
derstanding of their everyday life information seeking (ELIS)
behaviour.
The main objectives of this study of homeless youth in the market area of Accra, Ghana are to
investigate their information needs, sources of information, patterns and problems encoun
tered
in information seeking and to determine how libraries and other stakeholders can meet their
information needs.
The study adopted the interpretive tradition and the ethnographic
methodology. The field activities involved recruitment of 41 homeless you
th, comprising 22
males and 19 females,
ages 15 to 18 years using a
snowball sampling procedure, collection of
data using the critical incident technique and in
-
depth interviews, transcription of recorded
interviews, and identification of categories and th
emes from participant interviews through
content analysis using the NVivo qualitative data analysis software.
The findings revealed
eleven categories of
needs comprising physiological, safety, esteem and
sel
f
-
actualization needs. P
referred sources of infor
mation are primarily interpersonal. Other
sources are television, radio, print media and libraries. Information seeking patterns include
active and passive searching, passive attention, and a heavy reliance on
a
social network of
fr
iends. Barriers to meeti
ng information needs include
cost, lack of education, lack of time, lack
of access to relevant information and educational infrastructure, information poverty,
powerlessness, and lack of confidence.
iii
The study is significant in many ways.
It is the first st
udy of ELIS behaviour of homeless youth
in Africa. It makes a new proposition that,
in an environment of limited information resources
,
people rely on their social networks to meet their information needs.
The findings of the study
add to knowledge
and und
erstanding of youth information seeking behaviour and ELIS of
y
outh, especially homeless youth
. They have implications for information dissemination and
public library after
-
school programs
and policies to facilitate provision of services and
information r
esources for homeless youth in Ghana.
Description
Keywords
Citation
Markwei, E. D. (2013). Everyday life information seeking behaviour of urban homeless youth (Doctoral dissertation, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, CA)