THE THEORY OF COGNITIVE FIT - Human-Computer Interaction and Management Information Systems: Foundations - page 132

At the time of Vessey's second study on cognitive fit in more complex tasks (1994), the litera-
ture presented few examples of strategy shift in the graphs versus tables studies. Nonetheless,
those studies identified supported the notion of strategy shift when performance requirements did
not match (i.e., were inconsistent with) those emerging as a result of cognitive fit.
METHODOLOGY
In this section, we discuss how we obtained the sample of studies on cognitive fit that we used for
further examination, followed by the way in which we classified the studies for our analyses.
Choice of Studies for Further Examination
To identify a set of articles that used, tested, or extended the theory of cognitive fit in some way,
we engaged in the following series of steps.
Step 1. The first step involved identifying an initial set of articles that reference the theory of
cognitive fit. We first examined ISI's Web of Science to determine the studies published in jour-
nals referenced there that cited Vessey's 1991 paper. As noted earlier, on April 28, 2004 there
were 102 such articles. It is interesting to note that Vessey and Galletta (1991) was not one of
them, although it did, indeed, reference the article in question. This situation may have resulted
from a timing issue because both articles appeared in spring of that year.
Step 2. We then examined the 102 articles identified in Step 1 to determine those articles that
referred to cognitive fit in the title, abstract, or the keywords. ISI generates what are known as
Keywords Plus for many articles. These are “words or phrases that frequently appear in the titles
of an article's references, but do not necessarily appear in the title of the article itself. Keywords
Plus may be present for articles that have no author keywords, or may include important terms not
listed among the title, abstract, or author keywords” (ISI Web of Science). In this way, we reduced
the number of articles under consideration to twenty.
Step 3. We then searched EBSCO, using “cognitive fit” in the title field, followed by system-
generated plus author-supplied keywords, followed by author-supplied keywords alone to deter-
mine whether there were papers referenced there that were not included in the databases referenced
by the Web of Science. Because the results obtained on April 28, 2004 were problematic, we used
an earlier analysis conducted on November 26, 2003. This search revealed a further five articles.
Initially, then, we identified in this way a total of twenty-five articles that referenced cognitive fit.
Step 4. Although the principles that led to the formulation of the theory of cognitive fit were
originally recognized in the domain of systems development (Vessey and Weber, 1986) and many
studies have been conducted on cognitive fit in that area, this analysis addresses only those arti-
cles in which the theory is used to address decision-making issues. Hence, we eliminated studies
conducted in the systems development domain. This step reduced the number of articles under
consideration to nineteen.
Step 5. Because the objective of this analysis is to examine the progress that has been made
using the theory of cognitive fit, we further eliminated those articles that were conceptual in nature
and did not test cognitive fit or extended concepts. Furthermore, certain of the conceptual papers