Information need and Seeking Behavior of Rural Women: A Survey of Soon Valley

The purpose of this study was to checkup/recognizes the information needs and seeking behavior of the rural women living in the most underprivileged area of Pakistan named Soon Valley. The rationale behind this was to identify the purposes of seeking information and preferred information channels and sources. Furthermore to explore the satisfactory level of rural women from the services offered to them and problems faced by them in finding the needed information and to suggest solutions/recommendations for improvement in the resources and services. In-order to get a broader understanding, structured questionnaire based survey of Soon valley was conducted. Soon Valley consists of about 32 villages. Twenty villages of soon valley were the population. A purposive sampling technique is used to collect the required data. Data was collected from ten women by randomly selected from each village of soon valley. The research design were quantitative and consist of statistical analysis of questionnaires, Total no of 176 questionnaires were filled out of 200. It is the first type of study on information seeking behavior that is conducted in soon valley and particularly on rural women of Pakistan. Keyword(s): Female; Rural; Barrier; Pakistan; Soon Valley.