A Comparative Study of Native and Non-native Information Seeking Behaviours

Abstract

The proliferation of web-based technologies has led most national governments to begin transitioning to a so called "e-service," where provision is made through purely digital means. Despite their obvious benefits for most users, these on-line systems present barriers of access to certain groups in society. In this study we consider the information behaviour of non-native and native English speaking participants as they conduct search tasks designed to reflect actual information seeking situations in a UK governmental context. Results show that the non-natives rely more on query assistance, delve deeper into the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) and obtain better performance the longer they read documents. This was not the case for the natives, despite spending the most time reading documents. There are some similarities in their information seeking behaviours as both groups submit similar length queries, and are equally proficient in identifying when a failed query did not meet their information need. This proficiency was not reflected in their performance in some tasks, with both groups unable to consistently predict when they had not performed well. The results of this work have potentially profound repercussions for how e-government services are provided and how users are assisted in their use of these.

Understanding the costs and challenges of the digital divide through UK council services

“…Other issues involve language – the kind of language used on the forms and the varying language skills and literacy of users. Previous work has highlighted the potential dangers of ESL users being over-confident in their own language skills and therefore misunderstanding critical information sources, including e-government [48]. Language skills issues were not just restricted to those who are illiterate or have poor English skills, although this is certainly a problem [36] – digital literacy plays a big part [23].…”

Features of searching and selecting information when reading online in native and foreign languages by students of non-linguistic universities

“…При использовании иностранных источников студенты испытывают больше сложностей уже на первых этапах поиска информации, в частности, при отборе и оценке источников информации. Это связано с наличием важных различий между чтением на родном и иностранном языке: Бразиер и М. Харвей показали, что именно при работе на иностранном языке читатели больше полагаются на всплывающие подсказки при формулировании поискового запроса, внимательнее изучают страницу результатов поиска, и получают лучший результат, если дольше читают документы[22]. Исследование П. Чу, А. Комлоди и Г. Рожа выявило, что студенты обычно комбинируют свой родной язык и английский при поиске информации[23, с.…”