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Information literacy (IL) within the everyday life context is regarded as an important condition for civic participation and engagement, informed citizenship, health and well-being. However, compared to the significant amount of IL research within educational and workplace settings, there has been relatively little research in relation to the value of IL within everyday life situations. The purpose of this paper is to explore existing empirical research that addresses aspects of IL within the context of everyday life, identifying current gaps in the literature, highlighting key theoretical positions, and mapping trends.

The review has been conducted in the form of a scoping study that aims to map the key concepts underpinning this research area and the main sources and types of evidence available. It is based on journal literature reporting primary research, published from 2000 to 2016 and sourced from a range of different databases covering IL research.

IL practices take place within diverse everyday life contexts. The key research directions have been categorised into four broad contextual areas, encompassing leisure and community activities, citizenship and the fulfilment of social roles, public health and critical life situations. These point to the need for developing an IL mind-set which is discussed as an adaptive, transferable and ongoing activity that transgresses the boundaries of prescribed skills within the specific contexts of work and education.

This research area is still in its infancy and more varied contexts need to be explored to nurture a robust understanding of the use and impact of IL in people’s everyday lives. The paper also highlights the implications of the lack of IL and identifies the key players in the advocacy of IL within different everyday life settings.

The purpose of this paper is to report the design and implementation of the enhanced participant-driven photo elicitation method in a qualitative interview study, to assess the performance of the method to investigate a research topic in everyday life health information behaviour and to provide insights on how to effectively use this method in future research.

The author embedded the enhanced participant-driven photo elicitation in a qualitative interview study to examine people’s everyday life health information behaviour with activity tracking technology. The author assessed the types of visual data collected by the method, categories of elicitation enabled by the method and how the method contributed to key research findings of the interview study.

The enhanced participant-driven photo elicitation generated rich, unique and meaningful data that would be otherwise difficult to collect through conventional qualitative interviews. The method also elicited explanation, rationalisation and reflection during the interviews, which enriched and triangulated key research findings. This work validated the benefits of the general photo elicitation method such as aiding participants’ recall of experiences, enriching research findings and improving research validity. It also demonstrated that the enhancement techniques used in this study could generate rich and even research data across interviews.

This paper describes the design and implementation of the enhanced participant-driven photo elicitation method to augment a qualitative interview study with activity tracker users. The author provides recommendations for researchers to take full advantage of the method in future everyday life health information behaviour research.

As digital natives, young adults have been found to consider themselves to have good information literacy skills, when in fact many do not. Past research indicates that not only do young adults rely heavily on information obtained from the web and social networks, but also that they may not be able to judge the authenticity, validity, and reliability of digital information, and may share misinformation among themselves. This can be particularly problematic in the context of health information. Two complementary research studies investigated young adults’ information needs and information seeking in support of their personal well-being, and in comparison to academic and other everyday-life information domains. Results show that young adults consider a range of factors as part of their well-being; these include physical and mental health, spirituality, social connections, and financial stability. They engage in information seeking (active and passive) in support of all of these factors. While they were able to identify information resources as more or less credible, they did not necessarily choose highly credible resources most frequently. Interestingly, they did not use social media sources frequently in the context of health information, choosing to deliberately maintain a degree of privacy with respect to health. While there is evidence of some information literacy skills, there remains a need for further and more extensive information literacy education. This should be addressed by librarians from academic, consumer health, public, and school libraries.

The main aim of the paper is to explore whether health theatre as a school‐based health promotion initiative communicates relevant health knowledge to children and the interrelated processes of identity development, knowledge acquisition and participation. Development of the definition of “health identity” was a subsidiary objective of the study.

This was a qualitative study based on observation of five health theatre performances, with 20 focus group interviews with a total of 98 children and 22 individual interviews with teachers and parents.

Three themes emerged from the qualitative analysis: children's varying capacities for participation affect knowledge acquisition and identity development; health knowledge acquisition is enhanced when information is made relevant by linking health to everyday life; and acquisition of health information and children's health identities are closely related. Coherent information and environments are conducive to knowledge acquisition, and health promotion efforts must be careful to avoid reinforcing negative health identities and furthering perceived divisions between “healthy” and “unhealthy” children.

The paper provides important foundational information for school‐based health theatre initiatives. It presents knowledge for practitioners working with knowledge‐based health promotion for children and explores the connection between identities, health knowledge acquisition and participation within an alternative theoretical framework.

Building on theoretical foundation of personal information management (PIM) in information science, this paper seeks to understand how activity tracker users manage their personal health information generated by their devices and to elucidate future activity tracking technology in support of personal health information management (PHIM). This paper aims to discuss this issue.

The authors conducted a web survey study with a specific group of activity tracker users – amateur runners. This survey collected both quantitative and qualitative data on participants’ engagement with activity tracking technology, their PHIM practices with the information generated by the technology and how their needs were being met by their activity tracking technology use and PHIM practices.

Amateur runners surveyed in this study exhibit long-term engagement and frequent interaction with activity tracking technology. They also engage in PHIM practices by using a range of PHIM tools and performing various PHIM activities. Furthermore, they use activity tracking technology and engage in PHIM practices to meet various health/fitness-related needs and information needs, while some of these needs such as performance needs and overarching needs are only partially met or unmet.

This research discusses amateur runners as power users of activity tracking technology, provides timely updates to PIM and PHIM research in light of a new type of personal health information, and generates design considerations for future activity tracking technology in support of PHIM. It also brings together previously disparate research regarding everyday life PHIM in information science, human–computer interaction and health informatics.

This study investigated information needs on COVID-19 by identifying topics discussed on social questions and answers (Q&A) about daily routines, problems, and health issues for survival. A layered model of contexts for everyday life information seeking (ELIS) was adapted for interpreting topics to better understand the contexts in which users could relate information needs.

Questions and answers posted on Naver Knowledge-iN were collected and analyzed during the first nine months following the outbreak. Time distribution, topic modeling, and association rule mining were applied to examine the topics on COVID-19 and their temporal variation.

Numerous topics related to the cognitive context (symptoms and masks) and situational contexts (international affairs, financial support, study, and work) were discovered. Topics related to social context were discussed moderately, but the number of questions on this topic increased with time. Strong associations were observed between terms related to symptoms, indicating their importance as a COVID-19 topic in health.

This study investigated topics of information needs using social Q&A data in which not only information inquiry but also information sharing coexist. The findings can help bridge the theory of ELIS to topic modeling in practice. The insights gained from this study can be used by information service providers for developing guidance and programs about how to survive during a pandemic.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-10-2021-0547.

Despite societal investment in providing health information to young parents, little is known about the health information practices of young parents themselves. The purpose of this paper is to explore young parents’ health information practices in context.

This constructivist grounded theory study investigates the health information practices of young mothers and fathers (age 16-23) in Greater Vancouver, Canada. Data were collected over 16 months via individual interviews with 39 young parents (37 mothers, 2 fathers) and observations at young parent programs. Inductive analysis was iterative with data collection.

Young parent health information practices emerged, clustering around concepts of information seeking, assessment, and use, with sharing conceptualised as a form of use. Many young parents were sophisticated information seekers, and most were highly networked using mobile technology. While access to information was rarely a barrier, assessment of the large quantity of health-related information posed challenges.

These findings are not generalisable to all populations. Newly identified information-seeking practices such as defensive and subversive seeking should be explored further in future research.

Rather than focusing on quantity of information, health and information professionals trying to reach young parents should focus on fostering information literacy skills and building relationships as trusted information providers.

Young parent experiences of social marginalisation influenced their information practices and should be taken into consideration.

This first investigation of young parent information practices can guide services and resources for young parents, suggests that sharing might be conceptualised as a subset of use, and highlights new information-seeking practices by marginalised individuals, such as defensive and subversive seeking.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether there is a need to consider gender or sex differences as variables in information behaviour research and, if so, how?

A metasynthesis approach is used. A preliminary framework to categorise information behaviour research on women is developed by integrating main themes from feminist research and information behaviour research. Within each category, studies are compared and contrasted, to identify similar and divergent themes. Themes are then compared across categories, to synthesise the main concepts.

The categorisation works for most studies, apart from a group of studies on health information use, communicating risk and decision making. The meta‐synthesis indicates the importance of concepts such as situation (as mesh), intermediaries (as node with connections), and connecting behaviour. Gender‐related or, rather gender‐ascribed, constructs, such as concern for others, not gender alone are likely to be important variables in information behaviour.

The meta‐synthesis is a top‐level synthesis, as the number of studies prohibited a more detailed approach. Further meta‐synthesis of a few high quality research studies would help to confirm the findings.

The synthesis illuminates a different perspective on information behaviour: the network of information users rather than the individual information seeker.

The synthesis integrates some feminist research themes with information behaviour research, and the findings have implications for general information behaviour research.