Journal of the American Society for Information Science
Task complexity affects information seeking and use
Information Processing and Management: an International Journal
Information Processing and Management: an International Journal
Information and information sources in tasks of varying complexity
Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
Information seeking and mediated searching. Part 2: uncertainty and its correlates
Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
On contexts of information seeking
Information Processing and Management: an International Journal
The many faces of accessibility: engineers' perception of information sources
Information Processing and Management: an International Journal
Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology - Special issue: Part II: Information seeking research
Who will you ask? An empirical study of interpersonal task information seeking
Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
Source preferences in the context of seeking problem-specific information
Information Processing and Management: an International Journal
A faceted approach to conceptualizing tasks in information seeking
Information Processing and Management: an International Journal
Describing and predicting information-seeking behavior on the Web
Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
Fields and pathways: Contrasting or complementary views of information seeking
Information Processing and Management: an International Journal
International Journal of Information Management: The Journal for Information Professionals
The relationship between information and personal knowledge in new product development
International Journal of Information Management: The Journal for Information Professionals
A Comparison Between the Provision of Information to Engineering Designers in the UK and the USA
International Journal of Information Management: The Journal for Information Professionals
International Journal of Information Management: The Journal for Information Professionals
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As a first attempt to empirically investigate the scope of external information-seeking under uncertainty, this paper examines the direct and interactive effects of task uncertainty on the scope of external information-seeking. Search depth and breadth are the two components of the scope of external information-seeking in defining an individual's external information search strategy. The empirical results show that at the source portfolio level, task uncertainty exhibits positive effects on both the depth and breadth of external information-seeking. It is also found that there is a positive relationship between task uncertainty and depth-first propensity, which is defined as a seeker's propensity to acquire information through increasing search depth instead of through widening search breadth at the source portfolio level. Furthermore, the results show that the positive relationship between task uncertainty and depth-first propensity in external information-seeking is stronger when perceived source accessibility is low than when it is high. This study makes a contribution to the information-seeking literature by helping us understand how task uncertainty and source characteristics shape an individual's external information-seeking at the level of source portfolio and providing evidence of the task-source fit perspective in explaining information-seeking behaviour under uncertainty at the source portfolio level.