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Task complexity is a critical task characteristic that influences users' information seeking and search behavior. In general, researchers differentiate task complexity from objective and subjective task complexity. Both significantly affect task performance. However, few studies have been done to examine how task complexity could be measured from users' perspective in information science. The present study identifies a set of objective and subjective measures and conducted a survey. The survey asked users to judge the complexity of a task, and then give the reasons why they made that judgment based on the measures. Six simulated task situations were developed for the survey and 168 valid questionnaires (84% return rate) were analyzed. The results indicate that the number of words hard to understand, the number of languages required for search results, and the number of domain areas involved in a task could significantly predict task complexity. The study helps further understand the attributes of task complexity and has implications in research on interactive information retrieval (IIR), task-based information seeking and search, and personalization of information retrieval (IR).

This article presents an analysis of the female working poor in relation to gender employment segregation. It draws a cross-national profile of the female working poor in Belgium and China: two different nations with distinct stories of socio-economic development and cultural heritage, while both are characterized by high female employment participation. Analyses show that (1) women share a higher proportion among the total working poor population in both nations during recent years, whereas (2) in-work poverty has been a chronic condition, particularly among female workers in low-quality jobs. Thus, to some extent, labor market institutions may shape this gendered tendency of in-work poverty. In this article, women’s position in the public sphere in relation to employment segregation is discussed, and a contextual analysis identifies the causes of gender employment segregation. The results shed light on the crucial role of gender employment segregations related to in-work poverty and show that gender ideology and stereotypes do matter in explaining such employment differences. We argue that the promotion of female participation should be combined with explicit measures to reduce the disadvantageous position of women in the labor market.

In-work poverty seems to be a kind of "invisible poverty", which is closely related to the social risk and particularly lurks among working-age population. It de facto brings out the problematical aspects of economic and social secured conditions among individuals who are "in-work". In the labor market, describing and discussing the main working poor groups reveals the issue of in-work poverty. Based on this, working poor refer to the people who have a decent job but fall under the poverty threshold and have high risk into the condition of insecure and poor working/living quality. Internationally, the bulk of literature on in-work poverty comes from developed countries. However, the Asia-related research on in-work poverty remains underexplored. Thereby, the research describes a vivid picture of working poor in mainland China, makes a general definition and also, investigates that what kind of working groups in mainland China are suffering from high risk into poverty. The attempts will be made to distinguish the main in-work poverty groups with their trajectory historically under the labor market transformation and the economic reform. The research aims at a better understanding of poverty issue in the labor market underlying the life course and gender dimension.

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