Thinking like a bricoleur: New forms of rigor in research on information experience

Abstract

Research on information behavior, practice, and experience focuses on complex topics embedded in multiple circles of context. LIS researchers in these areas often adopt interpretive, participatory, or critical methods. Yet, they just as often are ambivalent to measurements of rigor, or they unintentionally use positivist criteria to measure quality. Each of these decisions is indicative of a deep-seated assumption about the nature of objectivity and subjectivity. Bricolage offers researchers a way to think about research outside of this assumption: to understand the object of inquiry as it really is, not as the researcher frames it. Thinking like a bricoleur, researchers circumvent exact research protocols and cultivate difference by combining methods, methodologies, theories, and philosophical positions in creative ways. Bricolage already has a toehold in LIS research, but the diverse topics and methods that researchers bring to studies of information behavior, practice, and experience call for greater engagement with it.