•occupation – information seekers in their work contexts (e.g. academic,scientist, engineer and doctor)
•social role– information seekers in their social functions (e.g. consumer,voter and library user)
•demographics– information seekers grouped by age (children, senior andso on), gender, ethnicity and geography.Byström (1999) observed that the organizational context affected how tasks werehandled and what outcomes of the task were expected. In a naturalistic,longitudinal study, Kelly (2006a, 2006b) aimed at investigating two information-seeking contextual factors: user-defined tasks and topics. Task was measuredby endurance (length), frequency and stage; topic was measured by persistence(over a time span) and familiarity (state of knowledge). This is the first studythat focused on context over time and designed a method for collectingnaturalistic, longitudinal data from the information seekers to understand theirperspectives to measure contextual variables (see Chapter 4, ‘Approaches toInvestigating Information Interaction and Behaviour’).