Measuring online information seeking context, Part 1: Background and method

Abstract

Context is one of the most important concepts in information seeking and retrieval research. However, the challenges of studying context are great; thus, it is more common for researchers to use context as a post hoc explanatory factor, rather than as a concept that drives inquiry. The purposes of this study were to develop a method for collecting data about information seeking context in natural online environments, and identify which aspects of context should be considered when studying online information seeking. The study is reported in two parts. In this, the first part, the background and method are presented. Results and implications of this research are presented in Part 2 (Kelly, in press). Part 1 discusses previous literature on information seeking context and behavior and situates the current work within this literature. This part further describes the naturalistic, longitudinal research design that was used to examine and measure the online information seeking contexts of users during a 14-week period. In this design, information seeking context was characterized by a user's self-identified tasks and topics, and several attributes of these, such as the length of time the user expected to work on a task and the user's familiarity with a topic. At weekly intervals, users evaluated the usefulness of the documents that they viewed, and classified these documents according to their tasks and topics. At the end of the study, users provided feedback about the study method.

A cross-domain analysis of task and genre effects on perceptions of usefulness

“…However, more empirical research is needed to determine the nature and extent of the task-genre relationship as it pertains to information retrieval. A number of studies have shown that document selection in the search process is influenced by genre (Freund, 2011;Freund & Berzowska, 2010; and by task (Freund & Berzowska, 2010;Kelly, 2006;Larsen, Malik, & Tombros, 2008;Tombros, Ruthven, & Jose, 2005), but very little work has looked at the trilateral relationship between task, genre and usefulness.…”

Contextualizing consumer health information searching

“…Although no consensus on what constitutes a context has been reached, researchers have generally agreed that the elements of context include cognitive, affective, social, linguistic, technical, organizational, or cultural factors related to a person and his/her tasks and goals [6,16,18]. In this study, we explore the context of consumer health information searching in terms of the following contextual elements: basic linguistic features of askers' expressions of their health information needs, their cognitive, social, and emotional motivations for asking questions on a Q&A site, time when the questions were asked, and askers' cognitive structure of their problem spaces.…”

Contextual Search: A Computational Framework

“…The special journal publication edited by Jones and Purves [90] is a useful reference on the issues of geographical variables. The papers on implicit relevance feedback by Kelly and Belkin [95,96]; Kelly and Fu [97]; Kelly et al [98]; Kelly [92,93,94] are definitely worth reading. The survey by Lalmas and Ruthven [107] provides a precise, recent and exhaustive account of relevance feedback.…”