Ford, N., Miller, D. and Moss, N. (2005) Web search strategies and human individual differences: cognitive and demographic factors, Internet attitudes, and approaches. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 56 (7). pp. 741-756.
Abstract
The research reported here was an exploratory study that sought to discover the effects of human individual differences on 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. Sixty-eight master's students used AltaVista to search for information on 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 on 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.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Information School (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Information Studies |
Date Deposited: | 24 Mar 2009 09:32 |
Last Modified: | 13 May 2009 16:22 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asi.20168 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1002/asi.20168 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:8043 |