Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 2.
Descriptions of the search tasks
T1:
In your class, some pupils need detailed tuberculosis (TB) examination.
Find a document to notify that the examination is TB reaction test and
direct chest X-ray.
T2:
The schedule of the open class day has been fixed. There also will be a
parent/guardian meeting after classes. Find a document to notify the
date and plan of the day.
T3:
Currently mass cold infections are going around the schools in the city.
Find a document informing on temporary closing of class and schedule
changes.
T4:
For educational purposes, school operates recycling. Find a document
to bring newspapers, magazines, cardboard of no use to school.
Procedure.
One half of the participants were assigned to the system without
the auto-suggest feature whereas another half were assigned to the system with
the auto-suggest feature. In each system condition, the participants attempted
the four search tasks in Table 2, where two tasks were assigned exclusively to each
of the two term weighting conditions (with or without the domain vocabulary). In
both systems, the task presentation order was carefully counterbalanced across
participants.
The experiment was conducted in the following sequence. After answered a
short demographic questionnaire, the participants were given an overview of
the study and a brief explanation of the system. The participants were then
asked to perform one practice task prior to the experimental tasks. For each of
the experimental tasks, the participants were presented a task instruction and
a sample copy of a school document that meet the requirements of the task
at hand. There was no feedback from the system if the participants selected a
correct document or not. This situation reflects the nature of the known-item
task in the sense that the searchers need to determine whether an expected
information item is actually found. In addition, the search time is limited to at
most 5 minutes for each task because it is not realistic for Web users to spend
more time for a know-item search task. Finally, the participants were asked to
complete a short questionnaire about their experience.
5 Results and Discussions
In the following analyses, the level of significance was set to
p<
0
.
05 for all
comparisons.
5.1 Search Success Rate
Table 3 shows average rates of search success achieved in the limited search time
within 1, 2, or 3 minutes. In each of the search time limit, a two-way ANOVA
