Resumen de Information Overload in a Disciplinary Context

Sirje Virkus, Sigrid Mandre, Elise Pals

• The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a study that explored how students from four different disciplines perceive information overload and cope with this phenomenon. We have formulated three research questions: How do students perceive information overload? How do students cope with information overload? What are the disciplinary differences in coping with information overload? The research involved a mixed methods research strategy, using both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, built into a two-stage research design. The first stage was a small-scale questionnaire survey among students from four disciplines: psychology, mathematics, informatics, and information science. The second stage involved the collection of qualitative data. In-depth interviews with students were conducted from four disciplines (psychology, mathematics, informatics, and information science). In this paper the authors will present the results of this study.