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What Can Searching Behavior Tell Us About the Difficulty of
Information Tasks? A Study of Web Navigation

Gwizdka, Jacek and Spence, Ian (2006) What Can Searching Behavior Tell Us About the Difficulty of
Information Tasks? A Study of Web Navigation. In Grove, Andrew, Eds. Proceedings 69th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIST) 43, Austin (US).

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Abstract

Task has been recognized as an influential factor in information seeking behavior. An increasing number of studies are concentrating on the specific characteristics of the task as independent variables to explain associated information-seeking activities. This paper examines the relationships between operational measures of information search behavior, subjectively perceived post-task difficulty and objective task complexity in the context of factual information-seeking tasks on the web. A question driven,
web-based information-finding study was conducted in a controlled experimental setting. The study participants performed nine search tasks of varying complexity. Subjective task difficulty was found to be correlated with many measures that characterize the searcher’s activities. Four of those measures -- (1) the number of the unique web pages visited; (2) the time spent on each page; (3) the degree of deviation from the optimal path; and (4) the degree of the navigation path’s linearity -- were found to be good predictors of subjective task difficulty. Objective task complexity was found to affect the relative importance of those predictors and to affect subjective assessment of task difficulty.

Keywords:information seeking behavior ; information retrieval ; Web searching
Subjects:I. Information treatment for information services > IK. Design, development, implementation and maintenance
B. Information use and sociology of information. > BI. User interfaces, usability.
H. Information sources, supports, channels. > HQ. Web pages.
L. Information technology and library technology. > LC. Internet, including WWW.
ID Code:8033
Deposited By:Medeiros, Norm
Deposited On:05 December 2006
All fields:Show all fields

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