Vakkari, P.: How specific thesauri and a general thesaurus cover lay persons' vocabularies concerning health, nutrition and social services
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- Abstract
- The aim of this study is to compare (1) the semantic structures in lay persons' questions addressed to ask-an-expert service in the fields of health, nutrition and social services, and (2) to which extent lay persons' vocabularies are covered by a general thesaurus and a specific thesaurus in each of these fields. As representation of information needs 50 questions were selected concerning both health and nutrition, and 163 concerning social services. The concepts and their expressions in the questions were identified, and their semantic relations were observed and classified into equivalence, hierarchical and associative relations. The semantic structure of questions varied somewhat between the fields observed. Lay persons' expressions were covered most extensively in health, and least extensively in social services. Specific thesaurus covered more extensively expressions in health (65%) than general thesaurus (42%), whereas in nutrition there was no difference (33% vs. 32%), and in social services general thesaurus (21%) covered expressions somewhat better compared to specific thesaurus (15%). In terms of matching both specific and general thesaurus would provide searchers with reasonable support in term selection for query construction in health, but with limited assistance in nutrition and social services.
