How children search the internet with keyword interfaces

Abstract

Children are among the most frequent users of the Internet, yet searching and browsing the web can present many challenges. Studies over the past two decades on how children search were conducted with finite and predetermined content found in CD-ROM applications, online digital libraries, and web directories. However, with the current popularity of the open Internet and keyword-based interfaces for searching it, more critical analysis of the challenges children face today is needed. This paper presents the findings of our initial study to understand how children ages 7, 9, and 11 search the Internet using keyword interfaces in the home. Our research has revealed that although today's children have been exposed to computers for most of their lives, spelling, typing, query formulation, and deciphering results are all still potential barriers to finding the information they need.

An analysis of queries intended to search information for children

“…Given that most of our findings are in-line with previous studies of children's information-seeking behavior [5,6,7,13], we consider that this work represents a valuable and well-suited methodology to study the search behavior of users retrieving information for children. Although these case-studies are highly valuable for the understanding of user's behavior, the characterization of users on a large-scale using query logs has several advantages: It is unobtrusive (which makes possible to capture the actual user behavior), safer, repeatable, non-disruptive, non-reactive, inexpensive, a resource of longitudinal data (accessibility over long periods of time) and it allows the design and evaluation of solutions in realistic scenarios.…”

“…The frequency of these type of queries are summarized in Table 2. In this table is shown that question queries are more frequent in the children queries (queries use to retrieve information for children) than in the general purpose query set, which is in line with Druin's observations [13].These findings suggest that query reduction and query segmentation techniques can be particularly beneficial for children content queries since it has been shown that longer queries are less efficient [23]. Similarly query reformulation techniques based on morphological and syntactical features of the queries can improve the search process by mapping phrases to concepts and keywords [14].…”

“…This findings suggests that children are less keen to explore low-ranked results beyond the first result page. Although in [13] is reported that children rarely go beyond the top 5 results, we observed a more even distribution in the children clicks rank 10. This findings is also consistent with Bilal's studies [5].…”

“…In this paper we will refer to the case studies on children search behavior carried out by Bilal [5,6,7] and Druin [13] to compare and analyze the findings on user's behavior drawn 2 http://www.dmoz.org/guidelines/kguidelines/ from the query log. We will also refer to Ofcom's study which presents an overview of media literacy among UK children from 5 to 15 years old based on a survey performed from 2007 to 2009 on 2131 families.…”

“…Druin et al [13] stated that kids of age 8 to 12 tend to formulate longer queries as a consequence of their preference to write queries using natural language constructions instead of keywords, specially when the information need requires multiple phases to be solved. It has also been found that children tend to express complex information needs by directly typing the question they have [7].…”