The Skill to Handle Information Overload: Construction and Evaluation of an Assessment Tool

With the ever growing amount of available information, people have to find skills to handle this overload of information. This research discusses the factors that contribute to the experienced information overload, divided into five categories: Information characteristics, task characteristics, personal factors, organizational factors and information technology factors. By varying the information and task characteristics in a simulation game and measuring people's performance we were able to distinguish between people's skill to handle information overload. In the constructed assessment game, people had to make decisions in a situation with high information load, and their performance was assessed by taking the efficiency of these decisions into account. To validate our test's results, various controlling tests where used with positive outcomes. Based on the two studies we conclude that the constructed test is a valid tool to distinguish in people's skill to handle information overload, with the preservation that the reliability of the adaptive test has to be further investigated.