Estimating effective display size in online retrieval systems

Wallace, Danny P.; Boyce, Bert R.; Kraft, Donald H.

doi:10.1016/0306-4573(88)90099-4

Information Processing & Management

1988

DOI: 10.1016/0306-4573(88)90099-4

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Estimating effective display size in online retrieval systems

Danny P. Wallace

Bert R. Boyce

Donald H. Kraft

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1992

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“…Very often, designers and evaluators of information retrieval systems have ignored end users' possible aversions to information overload. For example, Wallace, Boyce, and Kraft (1988) modeled the cost of displaying additional records during a search strictly in terms of the monetary costs, ignoring such psychological costs as information overload. Furthermore, the two most common measures of IR system performance, recall and precision, are both percentage measures, which makes them insensitive to the actual number of documents in question.…”

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“…He identified a cost in online searching associated with the fact that a certain number of documents are retrieved and must be looked at. Unlike Wallace et al (1988), Bookstein supposed that the cost includes psychological and physiological factors such as frustration and fatigue as well as monetary concerns. Regardless of whether they emphasize frustration or satiation, all of the above-mentioned authors make the point that users don't necessarily want indefinitely large searches.…”

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The size of retrieval sets

Kinnucan

1992

J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci.

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This study was concerned with the question of how much information users of online search services want when they have a search conducted. This question was investigated within the context of multiattribute decision making. Thirty-two individuals rated their likely satisfaction with the results of hypothetical online searches on a Pl-point scale. The hypothetical searches varied in terms of the number of documents retrieved, the percentage of retrieved documents that were relevant to the searcher's topic (the precision of the search), and the cost of the search. These three attributes were combined factorially to construct the hypothetical searches. Each subject in the study rated all of the searches. The results showed that the precision of the search had the largest effect on the satisfaction ratings. The size of the retrieval set did not affect the ratings directly, but did combine with precision in a multiplicative fashion, in that high precision was not as highly valued when there were larger numbers of documents in the retrieval set. The results were interpreted in terms of a psychological theory called "information integration theory." How Much InformationIs Enough?Several years ago, Marcia Bates (1984) introduced the notion of the "fallacy of the perfect 30-item search" to the information retrieval (IR) literature. She claimed that clients and searchers can become too focused on the number of items retrieved in an online search, rather than on whether the items in the final retrieval set adequately address the user's query. While it is likely that search intermediaries do sometimes fall victim to this fallacy, it is less clear that it is a fallacy for the clients to want to put a limit on the number of documents they are willing to deal with, even if all the documents are relevant to their topic (Wiberley & Daugherty, 1988). After all, the end user presumably Received August 20, 1990; revised February 6, 1991; accepted March 12, 1991. 0 1992 has to read and understand the material retrieved by a search, whereas a search intermediary does not.Very often, designers and evaluators of information retrieval systems have ignored end users' possible aversions to information overload. For example, Wallace, Boyce, and Kraft (1988) modeled the cost of displaying additional records during a search strictly in terms of the monetary costs, ignoring such psychological costs as information overload. Furthermore, the two most common measures of IR system performance, recall and precision, are both percentage measures, which makes them insensitive to the actual number of documents in question. For instance, it's not at all clear that clients would be as satisfied with 80% precision in a loo-item search as they would with 80% precision in a 30-item search. Yet, identifying both simply as searches with 80% precision treats them as equally valuable. In fact, since it retrieves a greater number of relevant documents, the loo-item search would probably be considered the better of the two, because of its higher recall. Howev...

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The size of retrieval sets

Kinnucan

1992

J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci.

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Estimating effective display size in online retrieval systems

Cited by 1 publication

References 30 publications

The size of retrieval sets

The size of retrieval sets

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