The Information-Seeking Behavior of Police Officers in Turkish National Police Page: 2

                                
Guclu, Idris. The information-seekinq behavior of police officers in Turkish
National Police. Doctor of Philosophy (Information Science), August 2011, 108 pp., 27
tables, 5 figures, references, 93 titles.
A current trend that has emerged as a result of the information age is
information-seeking behavior. From individuals to large social institutions, information-
seeking behavior is utilized to attain a wide variety of goals. This body of work
investigates the information-seeking behaviors of police officers who work in police
stations in the Turkish National Police force.
The study utilizes Leckie et al.'s (1996) model of information-seeking behavior of
professionals. The findings indicated that police officers initially consulted their personal
knowledge and experience. Next, officers rely upon their colleagues and then official
documents. These information source were consulted in the context of both conducting
tasks and staying current.
However, contrary to expectation, they rarely consulted informants. In addition
police officers rarely consulted printed journals, libraries, books and attendance at
conferences as information sources. The results of this study show that there were
significant differences in the information sources used by police officers based on their
gender in the context of staying current. On the other hand, there were no significant
differences in the context of conducting police station tasks, by gender.
Surprisingly, there were no significant differences in the information sources used
by police officers based on their educational level. There were significant differences in
the use of information sources by age, service years in police stations and service years
in policing in the context of conducting police station tasks.