The Information Needs Matrix: A navigational guide for refugee integration

•Refugees are faced with numerous needs to integrate into unfamiliar environment; host societies have difficulties providing for distinct needs.•We demonstrate that there is an order to the needs encountered during the integration journey.•We propose an information needs matrix that can act as a research map for immigrant and refugee information behaviour studies.•For policy and practice, the matrix is informational and operational: informational to the refuge-seekers and operational for the host society. This paper presents an information needs matrix as a navigation guide for refugees and host societies to support integration. It is an outcome from an information behaviour investigation into refugee integration, conducted through interviews with asylum seekers and refugees. A sense-making methodology was used as a framework to examine the experiences of refugees, focusing on the situations and information gaps encountered during integration. The study identified information needs on housing, financial, legal and social support, mobility, health, education, employment and state benefits. A unique feature of the proposed matrix is the order dependency of the uncovered needs by our investigation. The findings were validated with observation data collected while undertaking a role at the Scottish Refugee Council. The matrix can be used to guide society's provisions for integration, assess levels of individual integration and inform the design of information support for refugees.