O processo de busca de informação por alunos surdos na Universidade Federal da Paraíba

Based on the legal assumption that “all are equal before the law”, without any distinction, and considering that information is a basic and essential element for human beings, this dissertation was developed, which aims to analyze the behavior search for information by deaf university students on Campus I of the Federal University of Paraíba in the light of Carol Kuhlthau's model. This model is structured in six stages: initiation, selection, exploration, formulation, collection and presentation, which are accompanied by emotional reactions, showing the feelings of users in each of the stages. The research, of the descriptive type, characterized as field and qualitative-quantitative approach. It uses the questionnaire as a data collection instrument and the critical incident and content analysis techniques as data analysis procedures. The results obtained allowed tracing the profile of these students, which is composed by gender, mostly male, aged between 19 and 30 years old, enrolled mainly in the education area, studying, the majority, between the third and fourth period, in the face-to-face teaching modality, using the quota system as a way to enter the university. The research found that most of them have a severe degree of deafness and that they use combinations and different forms of communication: lip reading, Libras and oralization. As for access to information, it was found that most students have access to the internet, daily and from their own homes, through different devices, with smartphones and notebooks being the most common. Regarding the feelings experienced by students during the process of searching for information, the effective applicability of the Kuhlthau model was verified, which allowed the verification of the students' feelings in each stage proposed by the model, also showing the decrease in levels of uncertainty, increased confidence and the feeling of satisfaction, as the search process progressed. Regarding the existence of barrier...