Ungdomars informationsbehov
en undersökning av ungdomars informationsbehov och informationssökning på Internet inför gymnasievalet
The purpose of this thesis is to examine young people?s information needs whenthey are deciding on what upper secondary education to choose, why they usedInternet to find the information, and how they experienced their informationseeking. A qualitative study was made using interviews. The study?s respondentsconsisted of young people who are soon to be leaving elementary school, andyoung people who have just started their upper secondary education. Thetheoretical framework that was used to analyse the results of the study consisted oftheories and models regarding information needs and information seeking. Theresults of the study shows that, initially, the Internet does not seem to have asignificant role in the search for information. Rather, it was used at the end of thesearch, when they had decided which course of upper secondary education theywere interested in. The study respondents used schools' websites almostexclusively to find the information needed. They were interested mainly ininformation about the upper secondary program of their choice, and photos of theschool. They were very content in using the Internet to get information beforedeciding on which school to choose. They thought that it was simple to use, andthat it was accessible. It appeared, however, that although they were satisfied withthe Internet as information source they did not always understand the informationthat they found; nor were they interested in more or new information that couldaffect their decisions.