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Volume 6 Issue
October 2008
Information Anxiety: Fact, Fable or Fallacy
John Girard1 and Michael Allison2
1Minot State University, Minot, North Dakota, USA
2Touro University International, Cypress, California, USA
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The aim of this paper is to compare and contrast the findings of three recent
empirical studies that examined the construct of information anxiety. The concept
of anxiety created from information has been studied for hundreds of years; however,
this paper views this complex relationship based on the foundation provided by Richard
Wurman’s book Information Anxiety (1989). The three studies explored the five subcomponents
of information anxiety as described by Wurman: not understanding information; feeling overwhelmed
by the amount of information to be understood; not knowing if certain information exists; not
knowing where to find information; and knowing exactly where to find the information, but not
having the key to access it.
In order to gauge the level of information anxiety a survey instrument was designed
using eight management scenarios suggested by Davenport and Prusak in Working Knowledge (1998).
Four of the eight scenarios examine the creation of information from data and four scenarios focus
on the transformation of information into knowledge. Of specific interest to these studies was the
question is there a difference between information overload and information anxiety. In other words,
is the issue simply one of quantity or do other information related challenges make a difference.
To this end, the researchers sought to determine if respondents perceived a difference between
information overload and the other components of information anxiety.
The first of these studies determined that respondents reported a statistically significant
difference between information overload and several other components while the second study’s
respondents did not report such a difference. The conflicting results begged the question: is
information anxiety a fact, fiction, or fallacy? The third study reinforced the finding of the
initial study suggesting information anxiety is a real organizational malady worthy of the attention
of senior leaders. Clearly additional research is required to further refine the malady, its causes,
and ways to combat its debilitating effects.
Keywords:
information anxiety, knowledge management, information overload
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