Information Needs and Behaviors -- NASA Science Program Executives
Abstract
This paper presents a case study of the information-seeking behaviors, needs, and information use of a group of government science Program Executives (PEs). The study population is a small group of co-located individuals within one organization at NASA. The Science Mission Directorate manages NASA's unmanned space flight projects. Each flight project in development has a management team at Headquarters, including a Program Executive, a Program Scientist, and a budget analyst. A Program Executive works together with this team to define, integrate, and assess program activities and to provide policy direction and guidance to the program. All the individuals in the study population have the same job description, expectations, governing policies, and work resources. Studying this group provided an opportunity not only to describe their information behaviors and preferences, but also to compare the results with research describing the norms of engineers and executives. The study was designed to gather information about how Program Executives in the Science Mission Directorate seek information, their preferences about where to obtain information, and what kinds of information are most important to their work.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 17, 2009
- Accession Number
- ADA523540
Entities
People
- Shannon Lantzy
Organizations
- University of Maryland