Critical Incident Technique: One of the Methods for Information Use Studies

Abstract

Problems have been raised against traditional use or user studies in terms of the approaches to collect and handle data. They come from the followings.
1) meaning of a term varies from person to person
2) a term is used differently by the same person in different situations
One of the way to get rid of the problems is to use ‘Critical Incident Technique'，which is a method to describe and categorize incidents about actual behavior of the subjects under investigation.
This paper describes characteristics of the technique and shows its usefulness for the study of information use and users.