User study on older adults’ use of the Web and search engines

Aula, Anne

doi:10.1007/s10209-004-0097-7

Cited by 73 publications

(72 citation statements)

References 32 publications

(47 reference statements)

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“…Two of the main barriers to computer usage for older adults are low-self efficacy and high anxiety attached to computer usage. Older adults that reported computer usage before retirement have been described as using computers to be a negative experience [Aula 2005]. A possible reason for this negative experience stems from developers blaming users for mistakes made rather than bad system design.…”

Section: Using Age To Distinguish Between Usersmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Analysis of Age, Technology Usage, and Cognitive Characteristics Within Information Retrieval Tasks

Crabb

Hanson

2016

ACM Trans. Access. Comput.

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This work presents two studies that aim to discover whether age can be used as a suitable metric for distinguishing performance between individuals or if other factors can provide greater insight. Information retrieval tasks are used to test the performance of these factors. First, a study is introduced that examines the effect that fluid intelligence and Internet usage has on individuals. Second, a larger study is reported on that examines a collection of Internet and cognitive factors in order to determine to what extent each of these metrics can account for disorientation in users. This work adds to growing evidence showing that age is not a suitable metric to distinguish between individuals within the field of human-computer interaction. It shows that factors such as previous Internet experience and fluid-based cognitive abilities can be used to gain better insight into users’ reported browsing experience during information retrieval tasks.

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Section: Using Age To Distinguish Between Usersmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Analysis of Age, Technology Usage, and Cognitive Characteristics Within Information Retrieval Tasks

Crabb

Hanson

2016

ACM Trans. Access. Comput.

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“…Complexity and difficulty to learn its usage added to this perception [12,26]. However, this is no longer the case, as is evident from the fact that they are now one of the fastest growing users of the Internet [1,9]. Recent studies show that older adults are now as enthusiastic as younger adults in using the web [38].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Age-related Differences in the Content of Search Queries when Reformulating

Karanam

Oostendorp

2016

Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

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This study investigated the change in the content of the queries when performing reformulations in relation to age and task difficulty. Results showed that both generalization and specialization strategies were applied significantly more often for difficult tasks compared to simple tasks. Young participants were found to use specialization strategy significantly more often than old participants. Generalization strategy was also used significantly more often by young participants, especially for difficult tasks. Young participants were found to reformulate much longer than old participants. The semantic relevance of queries with the target information was found to be significantly higher for difficult tasks compared to simple tasks. It showed a decreasing trend across reformulations for old participants and remained constant for young participants, indicating that as old participants reformulated, they produced queries that were further away from the target information. Implications of these findings for design of information search systems are discussed.

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“…Copyright # 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Older adults are one of the fastest growing demographic groups of web users, and mainly use the Web to search for information and to communicate (e.g. Aula, 2005;Dinet et al, 2007;Hart, Chapparro, & Halcomb, 2008;Stronge, Rogers, & Fisk, 2006). However, older adults are less accurate and/or often slower to find information on the Web than younger adults (Chevalier, Dommes, Martins, & Valérian, 2007;Czaja, Sharit, Ownby, Roth, & Nair, 2001;Pak & Price, 2008).…”

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confidence: 99%

The role of cognitive flexibility and vocabulary abilities of younger and older users in searching for information on the web

Dommès

Chevalier

Lia

2010

Applied Cognitive Psychology

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The present study investigated the role of cognitive flexibility and vocabulary abilities in explaining age-related differences in information searching with a search engine. Nineteen older and 20 younger participants had to carry out nine searches and to complete a battery of cognitive tests. Older participants obtained poorer search performance with fewer correct answers, and lower task completion speed. They interacted little with the system, and showed specific difficulties in getting out of impasses and reformulating unfruitful requests. Regression analyses suggested that age differences in the number of requests were moderated by differences in cognitive flexibility and that the older participants did not leverage their increased vocabulary in producing new keywords. The findings suggest that the age-related decline in cognitive flexibility plays a role in the age-related differences observed in searching for information, especially in the way users get out of impasses. The results have implications for designing search engine tools.

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User study on older adults’ use of the Web and search engines

Cited by 73 publications

References 32 publications

An Analysis of Age, Technology Usage, and Cognitive Characteristics Within Information Retrieval Tasks

An Analysis of Age, Technology Usage, and Cognitive Characteristics Within Information Retrieval Tasks

Age-related Differences in the Content of Search Queries when Reformulating

The role of cognitive flexibility and vocabulary abilities of younger and older users in searching for information on the web

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