3 - Methodological Choices of Information Literacy in the Workplace: Qualitative, Quantitative or Mixed-Methods?

Summary

Introduction

Digitalisation has not only impacted business and entrepreneurial activities (Urbach et al., 2019), but also workforce activities in workplaces (Farivar and Richardson, 2021). The digital revolution has created a new era of information-based society. Organisations need highly literate workforces to meet the challenges posed by digitalisation as well as the opportunities it presents (Iversen, Smith and Dindler, 2018). Literacy skills, and more fundamentally information literacy (hereinafter IL), have become an increasingly important prerequisite skill for lifelong learning in the 21st century (Lloyd, 2010). The traditional definition of IL refers to the ability to recognise information needs and to identify, assess and use the information (Bruce, 1999). In the workplace, IL includes the ability to use various information sources and tools, synthesise information, evaluate information, use information in practice and share information with colleagues (Gilbert, 2017). While IL has primarily been addressed, examined and measured in the educational context (for example, Jang et al., 2021; Johnston and Webber, 2003; O’Connor, Radcliff and Gedeon, 2002; Nikou and Aavakare, 2021), a few studies have investigated IL in the workplace, addressing the methodological choices and their consequences for workplace IL research (Gilbert, 2017; Widén et al., 2021a).

The aim of this chapter is to focus on the methodological choices (quantitative, qualitative or mixed-methods) that can be used in workplace IL research. This chapter also introduces a relatively new approach for analysing IL in the workplace called ‘fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis’ (hereinafter fsQCA) (Ragin, 1987). The fsQCA is an analysis technique and enables researchers to better understand the complexity of workplace IL. It should be noted that we do not engage with philosophical traditions, such as positivism, interpretivism and pragmaticism – they are beyond the scope of this chapter. We recommend that interested readers check Lipu, Williamson and Lloyd (2007) for a better understanding of research philosophies in the context of IL.

This chapter is guided by the following research question: What are the methodological choices for assessing IL in the workplace and what factors should be considered when selecting one?