Study Methods (original) (raw)

2008

Traditionally, researchers have portrayed informationseeking as systematic, orderly, and procedural. But as this child shows (Figure 1), seeking information using a keyword search interface on the Internet can lead to uncertainty and confusion, with a search process that can be repetitive, complex and at times end in frustration. This is a child we have come to call a Developing Searcher. He has challenges with spelling, typing, query formulation and results interpretation. Over the last year, our work with 83 children, ages 7, 9, and 11, have shown that these young people demonstrate seven distinctive search roles, sometimes with multiple roles present during any given information-seeking experience. To define these roles we examined their behavioral patterns by age and gender with particular interest in what triggered searching and what the barriers were.

How adolescents search the Internet: Search roles and adult stakeholders

Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 2013

In this article, we present an in-home observation and in-context research study investigating how 38 adolescents aged 14–17 search on the Internet. We present the search trends adolescents display and develop a framework of search roles that these trends help define. We compare these trends and roles to similar trends and roles found in prior work with children ages 7, 9, and 11. We use these comparisons to make recommendations to adult stakeholders such as researchers, designers, and information literacy educators about the best ways to design search tools for children and adolescents, as well as how to use the framework of searching roles to find better methods of educating youth searchers. Major findings include the seven roles of adolescent searchers, and evidence that adolescents are social in their computer use, have a greater knowledge of sources than younger children, and that adolescents are less frustrated by searching tasks than younger children. Foss, E., Hutchinson, H., Druin, A., Yip, J., Ford, W., & Golub, E. (2013). Adolescent search roles. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 64(1), 173-189.

Supporting Children’s Web Search in School Environments

Nowadays, the Internet represents a ubiquitous source of information and communication. Its central role in everyday life is reflected in the curricula of modern schools. Already in early grades, children are encouraged to search for information on-line. However, the way in which they interact with state-of-the-art search interfaces and how they explore and interpret the presented information, differs greatly from adult user behaviour. This work describes a qualitative user study in which the Web search behaviour of Dutch elementary school children was observed and classified into roles motivated by prior research in cognitive science. Building on the findings of this survey, we propose an automatic method of identifying struggling searchers in order to enable teaching personnel to provide appropriate and targeted guidance where needed.

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