The study of children's information‐seeking behavior bears many challenges. Children are information seekers with needs and development characteristics that vary from those of adults. Cognitive developmental ability, memory and recall levels; emotional, social, and physical developments are factors that influence use of various information retrieval systems. Reliable, multiple inquiry methods are needed to elicit children's information‐seeking behavior. What research methodology would best be suited for the study of children's information seeking? Federal regulations require that researchers submit an application to an Institutional Review Board (IRB) to request permission for using children as subjects in research projects. The IRB guidelines may discourage many researchers from conducting such research due to complexity and time involved to comply with the regulations. The presenters will report on the results of recent studies that employed various types of inquiry methods to examine children's information‐seeking behavior, and will discuss the IRB regulations relating to use of children as human subjects in research projects.
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Bila et al. (2002) studied this question.