Investigating information anxiety in the Maltese ICT industry

Abstract

Information Anxiety is defined “stress caused by the inability to access, understand, or make use of information necessary for employees to do their job”. Even though it is in itself an intangible phenomenon, it is widely acknowledged and has been linked to impaired decision-making ability, information withdrawal, information avoidance, burnout and other health issues. This project investigated the presence of information anxiety in the Maltese ICT industry. Using SMS technology, 18 participants were asked a question every working day during March 2018 in order to gauge their anxiety levels based on five separate indicators: (1) struggling to understand information; (2) having too much information to process; (3) not knowing whether information they need exists; (4) not knowing where to locate required information; and finally (5) not having access to the information. Data indicates that information anxiety was present in varying degrees in as many as 44% of participants, with the most common cause being that of information overload. The level of information anxiety is industry-agnostic in terms of overall levels but the causes of anxiety do differ from industry to industry. With regards to job roles, various roles within ICT seem to correlate with higher levels of anxiety. Most notably, the most anxiety-inducing roles are those associated with Software Quality Assurance. Participant experience was also seen to affect levels of anxiety with more experienced participants exhibiting lower levels of information overload. This study contributes a research method for providing empirical measurement of an intangible phenomena as well as metrics and visualisation aides for analysing the data, both as static snapshots and as moving indicators over time. It is hoped that similar tools will be able to help managers detect and effectively manage information anxiety in the Maltese ICT industry.