Volume I of this 4-volume report contains the research instruments used in an 18-month project which was designed to understand the rural poor in terms of their information-seeking and information-utilization behavior patterns. Randomly divided into 3 groups, 840 families from 7 target counties in northwestern Florida were studied by a group of…

This paper examines the elements of user studies and presents them as unified concepts within a model of information-seeking behavior. Definitions of information-seeking behavior, information needs, information gathering, information giving, and source preference are discussed. Thirty-two references are cited. (EJS)