Search (17 results, page 1 of 1)

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Abstract

This study investigated Simon's behavioral decisionmaking theories of bounded rationality and satisficing in relation to young people's decision making in the World Wide Web, and considered the role of personal preferences in Web-based decisions. It employed a qualitative research methodology involving group interviews with 22 adolescent females. Data analysis took the form of iterative pattern coding using QSR NUD*IST Vivo qualitative data analysis software. Data analysis revealed that the study participants did operate within the limits of bounded rationality. These limits took the form of time constraints, information overload, and physical constraints. Data analysis also uncovered two major satisficing behaviors-reduction and termination. Personal preference was found to play a major role in Web site evaluation in the areas of graphic/multimedia and subject content preferences. This study has related implications for Web site designers and for adult intermediaries who work with young people and the Web

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Abstract

This article reviews studies, conducted between 1995 and 2000, on Web search behavior. These studies reported on children as well as on adults. Most of the studies on children described their interaction with the Web. Research on adult searchers focused on describing search patterns, and many studies investigated effects of selected factors on search behavior, including information organization and presentation, type of search task, Web experience, cognitive abilities, and affective states. What distinguishes the research on adult searchers is the use of multiple data-gathering methods. The research on Web search behavior reflects researchers' commitment to examine users in their information environment and exhibits rigor in design and data analysis. However, many studies lack external validity. Implications of this body of research are discussed.

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Abstract

As more people gain at-home access to the Internet, information seeking an the Web has become embedded in everyday life. The objective of this study was to characterize the home as an information use environment and to identify a range of information seeking and Websearch behaviors at home. Twelve Northern California residents were recruited, and the data were collected through semi-structured at-home interviews based an a self-reported Search Activities Diary that subjects kept over a 3-5 day period. The data were analyzed an four levels: home environment, information seeking goals, information retrieval interaction, and search query. Eindings indicated that the home, indeed, provided a distinct information use environment beyond physical setting alone in which the subjects used the Web for diverse purposes and interests. Based an the findings, the relationships among home environment, Web context, and interaction situation were identified with respect to user goals and information-seeking behaviors.

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Abstract

The emergence of information portal systems in the past few years has led to a greatly enhanced Web-based environment for users seeking information online. While considerable research has been conducted an user information-seeking behavior in regular IR environments over the past decade, this paper focuses specifically an how users in a medical science and clinical setting carry out their daily information seeking through a customizable information portal system (MyWelch). We describe our initial study an analyzing Web usage data from MyWelch to see whether the results conform to the features and patterns established in current information-seeking models, present several observations regarding user information-seeking behavior in a portal environment, outline possible long-term user information-seeking patterns based an usage data, and discuss the direction of future research an user information-seeking behavior in the MyWelch portal environment.

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Abstract

With the rapid diffusion of the Internet, researchers, policy makers, and users have raised concerns about online privacy, although few studies have integrated aspects of usage with psychological and attitudinal aspects of privacy. This study develops a model involving gender, generalized self-efficacy, psychological need for privacy, Internet use experience, Internet use fluency, and beliefs in privacy rights as potential influences on online privacy concerns. Survey responses from 413 college students were analyzed by bivariate correlations, hierarchical regression, and structural equation modeling. Regression results showed that beliefs in privacy rights and a psychological need for privacy were the main influences on online privacy concerns. The proposed structural model was not well supported by the data, but a revised model, linking self-efficacy with psychological need for privacy and indicating indirect influences of Internet experience and fluency on online privacy concerns about privacy through beliefs in privacy rights, was supported by the data.

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Abstract

Web links have been studied by information scientists for at least six years but it is only in the past two that clear evidence has emerged to show that counts of links to scholarly Web spaces (universities and departments) can correlate significantly with research measures, giving some credence to their use for the investigation of scholarly communication. This paper reports an a study to investigate the factors that influence the creation of links to journal Web sites. An empirical approach is used: collecting data and testing for significant patterns. The specific questions addressed are whether site age and site content are inducers of links to a journal's Web site as measured by the ratio of link counts to Journal Impact Factors, two variables previously discovered to be related. A new methodology for data collection is also introduced that uses the Internet Archive to obtain an earliest known creation date for Web sites. The results show that both site age and site content are significant factors for the disciplines studied: library and information science, and law. Comparisons between the two fields also show disciplinary differences in Web site characteristics. Scholars and publishers should be particularly aware that richer content an a journal's Web site tends to generate links and thus the traffic to the site.

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Abstract

There is very little qualitative data on what impact the Internet is having on information seeking in the workplace. Using open-ended interviews, questionnaires and observation, the impact of the Internet on the British Media was assessed. The focus was largely on newspapers, with The Guardian being covered in some depth. Over 300 journalists and media librarians were surveyed. It was found that amongst traditional journalists use was light. Poor access to the Internet - and good access to other information resources - were largely the reasons for this. Of the journalists it was mainly the older and more senior journalists and the New Media journalists who used the Internet. Librarians were also significant users. Searching the World Wide Web was the principal Internet activity and use was generally conservative in character. Newspapers and official sites were favoured, and searches were mainly of a fact-checking nature. Email was used on a very limited scale and was not regarded as a serious journalistic tool. Non-users were partly put off by the Internet's potential for overloading them with information and its reputation for producing information of suspect quality. Users generally dismissed these concerns, dealing with potential overload and quality problems largely by using authoritative sites and exploiting the lower quality data where it was needed. Where the Internet has been used it has not been at the expense of other information sources or communication channels, but online hosts seem to be at most risk in the future.

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Abstract

Increased enrollments, changing student expectations, and shifting patterns of Internet access and usage continue to generate resource and administrative challenges for colleges and universities. Computer center staff and college administrators must balance increased access demands, changing system loads, and system security within constrained resources. To assess the changing academic computing environment, computer center directors from several geographic regions were asked to respond to an online questionnaire that assessed patterns of usage, resource allocation, policy formulation, and threats. Survey results were compared with data from a study conducted by the authors in 1999. The analysis includes changing patterns in Internet usage, access, and supervision. The paper also presents details of usage by institutional type and application as well as recommendations for more precise resource assessment by college administrators.

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Abstract

This study develops three alternative models of academic library Web site usage based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). The three alternative models depict relationships among various intrinsic and extrinsic determinant factors of an academic library's Web site usage. The four factors included in the models are perceived ease-of-use, perceived usefulness, service functionality, and task functionality. These four factors are hypothesized to affect directly or indirectly both factors of satisfaction and intention-to-use. LISREL analysis using survey data shows that the best-fit model is the Dual Mediation Impact Model. Research and managerial implications for the academic library are discussed. Future research directions and limitations also are provided.

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Abstract

The Alexandria Digital Library (ADL) is one of the 6 digital library projects funded by NSF, DARPA, and NASA. ADL's collection and services focus on information containing georeferences: maps, images, data sets, text and other information sources with links to geographic locations. During this study period, 3 different user interfaces were developed and tested by user groups. User feedback was collected through various formal and informal approaches and the results fed back into the design and implementation cycle. This article describes the evolution of the ADL system and the effect of user evaluation on that evolution. ADL is an ongoing project; user feedback and evaluation plans for the remainder of the project are described

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Abstract

Finding information an the Web can be a much more complex search process than previously experienced an many pre-Web information retrieval systems given that finding content online does not have to happen via a search algorithm typed into a search field. Rather, the Web allows for a myriad of search strategies. Although there are numerous studies of Web search techniques, these studies often limit their focus to just one part of the search process and are not based an the behavior of the general user population, nor do they include information about the users. To remedy these shortcomings, this project looks at how peopie find information online in the context of their other media use, their general Internet use patterns, in addition to using information about their demographic background and social support networks. This article describes the methodology in detail, and suggests that a mix of survey instruments and in-person observations can yield the type of rich data set that is necessary to understand in depth the differences in people's information retrieval behavior online.

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Abstract

The research reported here was an exploratory study that sought to discover the effects of human individual differences an Web search strategy. These differences consisted of (a) study approaches, (b) cognitive and demographic features, and (c) perceptions of and preferred approaches to Web-based information seeking. Sixtyeight master's students used AItaVista to search for information an three assigned search topics graded in terms of complexity. Five hundred seven search queries were factor analyzed to identify relationships between the individual difference variables and Boolean and best-match search strategies. A number of consistent patterns of relationship were found. As task complexity increased, a number of strategic shifts were also observed an the part of searchers possessing particular combinations of characteristics. A second article (published in this issue of JASIST; Ford, Miller, & Moss, 2005) presents a combined analyses of the data including a series of regression analyses.

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Abstract

This is the second of two articles published in this issue of JASIST reporting the results of a study investigating relationships between Web search strategies and a range of human individual differences. In this article we provide a combined analysis of the factor analyses previously presented separately in relation to each of three groups of human individual difference (study approaches, cognitive and demographic features, and perceptions of and approaches to Internet-based information seeking). It also introduces two series of regression analyses conducted an data spanning all three individual difference groups. The results are discussed in terms of the extent to which they satisfy the original aim of this exploratory research, namely to identify any relationships between search strategy and individual difference variables for which there is a prima facie case for more focused systematic study. It is argued that a number of such relationships do exist. The results of the project are summarized and suggestions are made for further research.

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Abstract

Conventional wisdom holds that queries to information retrieval systems will yield more relevant results if they contain multiple topic-related terms and use Boolean and phrase operators to enhance interpretation. Although studies have shown that the users of Web-based search engines typically enter short, term-based queries and rarely use search operators, little information exists concerning the effects of term and operator usage on the relevancy of search results. In this study, search engine users formulated queries on eight search topics. Each query was submitted to the user-specified search engine, and relevancy ratings for the retrieved pages were assigned. Expert-formulated queries were also submitted and provided a basis for comparing relevancy ratings across search engines. Data analysis based on our research model of the term and operator factors affecting relevancy was then conducted. The results show that the difference in the number of terms between expert and nonexpert searches, the percentage of matching terms between those searches, and the erroneous use of nonsupported operators in nonexpert searches explain most of the variation in the relevancy of search results. These findings highlight the need for designing search engine interfaces that provide greater support in the areas of term selection and operator usage

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Abstract

In this article, we report results of an investigation into the effect of sponsored links on ecommerce information seeking on the Web. In this research, 56 participants each engaged in six ecommerce Web searching tasks. We extracted these tasks from the transaction log of a Web search engine, so they represent actual ecommerce searching information needs. Using 60 organic and 30 sponsored Web links, the quality of the Web search engine results was controlled by switching nonsponsored and sponsored links on half of the tasks for each participant. This allowed for investigating the bias toward sponsored links while controlling for quality of content. The study also investigated the relationship between searching self-efficacy, searching experience, types of ecommerce information needs, and the order of links on the viewing of sponsored links. Data included 2,453 interactions with links from result pages and 961 utterances evaluating these links. The results of the study indicate that there is a strong preference for nonsponsored links, with searchers viewing these results first more than 82% of the time. Searching self-efficacy and experience does not increase the likelihood of viewing sponsored links, and the order of the result listing does not appear to affect searcher evaluation of sponsored links. The implications for sponsored links as a long-term business model are discussed.

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Abstract

In previous articles, we reported the state of Web searching in 1997 (Jansen, Spink, & Saracevic, 2000) and in 1999 (Spink, Wolfram, Jansen, & Saracevic, 2001). Such snapshot studies and statistics on Web use appear regularly (OCLC, 1999), but provide little information about Web searching trends. In this article, we compare and contrast results from our two previous studies of Excite queries' data sets, each containing over 1 million queries submitted by over 200,000 Excite users collected on 16 September 1997 and 20 December 1999. We examine how public Web searching changing during that 2-year time period. As Table 1 shows, the overall structure of Web queries in some areas did not change, while in others we see change from 1997 to 1999. Our comparison shows how Web searching changed incrementally and also dramatically. We see some moves toward greater simplicity, including shorter queries (i.e., fewer terms) and shorter sessions (i.e., fewer queries per user), with little modification (addition or deletion) of terms in subsequent queries. The trend toward shorter queries suggests that Web information content should target specific terms in order to reach Web users. Another trend was to view fewer pages of results per query. Most Excite users examined only one page of results per query, since an Excite results page contains ten ranked Web sites. Were users satisfied with the results and did not need to view more pages? It appears that the public continues to have a low tolerance of wading through retrieved sites. This decline in interactivity levels is a disturbing finding for the future of Web searching. Queries that included Boolean operators were in the minority, but the percentage increased between the two time periods. Most Boolean use involved the AND operator with many mistakes. The use of relevance feedback almost doubled from 1997 to 1999, but overall use was still small. An unusually large number of terms were used with low frequency, such as personal names, spelling errors, non-English words, and Web-specific terms, such as URLs. Web query vocabulary contains more words than found in large English texts in general. The public language of Web queries has its own and unique characteristics. How did Web searching topics change from 1997 to 1999? We classified a random sample of 2,414 queries from 1997 and 2,539 queries from 1999 into 11 categories (Table 2). From 1997 to 1999, Web searching shifted from entertainment, recreation and sex, and pornography, preferences to e-commerce-related topics under commerce, travel, employment, and economy. This shift coincided with changes in information distribution on the publicly indexed Web.

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Abstract

The purposes of this study were to explore college students' perceptions, uses of, and motivations for using Wikipedia, and to understand their information behavior concerning Wikipedia based on social cognitive theory (SCT). A Web survey was used to collect data in the spring of 2008. The study sample consisted of students from an introductory undergraduate course at a large public university in the midwestern United States. A total of 134 students participated in the study, resulting in a 32.8% response rate. The major findings of the study include the following: Approximately one-third of the students reported using Wikipedia for academic purposes. The students tended to use Wikipedia for quickly checking facts and finding background information. They had positive past experiences with Wikipedia; however, interestingly, their perceptions of its information quality were not correspondingly high. The level of their confidence in evaluating Wikipedia's information quality was, at most, moderate. Respondents' past experience with Wikipedia, their positive emotional state, their disposition to believe information in Wikipedia, and information utility were positively related to their outcome expectations of Wikipedia. However, among the factors affecting outcome expectations, only information utility and respondents' positive emotions toward Wikipedia were related to their use of it. Further, when all of the independent variables, including the mediator, outcome expectations, were considered, only the variable information utility was related to Wikipedia use, which may imply a limited applicability of SCT to understanding Wikipedia use. However, more empirical evidence is needed to determine the applicability of this theory to Wikipedia use. Finally, this study supports the knowledge value of Wikipedia (Fallis, [2008]), despite students' cautious attitudes toward Wikipedia. The study suggests that educators and librarians need to provide better guidelines for using Wikipedia, rather than prohibiting Wikipedia use altogether.