Abstract
This research investigates the relations between the usefulness assessments of retrieved documents and the perceptions of task complexity and search topic specificity. Twenty-three academic researchers submitted 65 real task-based information search topics. These task topics were searched in an integrated document collection consisting of full text research articles in PDFs, abstracts, and bibliographic records (the iSearch Test Collection in Physics). The search results were provided to the researchers who, as task performers, made assessments of usefulness using a four-point sale (highly, fairly, marginally, or not useful). In addition, they also assessed the perceived task complexity (highly, fairly, and routine/low) and the perceived specificity of the search topic (highly, fairly, and generic/low). It is found that highly specific topics associate with all degrees of task complexity, whereas highly complex tasks tend to associate with search topics of high specificity. Although bibliographic records show better precisions than full text PDF documents, the latter contributed more useful documents. Suggestions are made for further studies in naturalist IR experiments.
| Original language | English |
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| Title of host publication | Proceedings of the ECIR 2012 Workshop on Task-Based and Aggregated Search (TBAS2012). |
| Editors | Birger Larsen, Christina Lioma, Arjen P. de Vries |
| Number of pages | 4 |
| Publication date | 1 Apr 2012 |
| Pages | 19-23 |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Apr 2012 |