Understanding the information needs and information seeking behaviour of grassroots leaders in Singapore.

This dissertation seeks to understand the information need and seeking behavior of the grasroots leaders in Singapore. The areas explored by this study included: the information need of grasroots leaders, perceived information and usage of different information sources, preferred information formats, frequency and modes of information sharing,and adequacy and use of grassroots-related online information sources. A pre-tested questionnaire was used for gathering the data. A total of 70 grassroots leaders from Queenstown and Bukit Batok constituencies made up the study sample and 48 filled-in questionnaire were returned, result in a response rate of 68.6%. The study found that a majority of grassroots leaders often needed information about various financial assistance schemes available to needy resisdents, current and proposed government policies, bills and developmental schemes for handling public queries. For this purpose, the grassroots leaders either preferred approaching Community Centres or using newspaper for obtaining the needed information. The survey also revealed that information sharing was quite prevalent among grassroots leaders and most of the time the information was shared during face-to-faced meetings or through telephonic conversations. It was somewhat surprising to note that email was not very popular among the grassroots leaders for sharing information.Master of Science (Information Studies