Journal article
Evaluation of a Scatter/Gather Interface for Supporting Distinct Health Information Search Tasks
Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, v 65(5), pp 1028-1041
01 May 2014
Featured in Collection : UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
Abstract
Web search engines are important gateways for users to access health information. This study explored whether a search interface based on the Bing API and enabled by Scatter/Gather, a well-known document-clustering technique, can improve health information searches. Forty participants without medical backgrounds were randomly assigned to two interfaces: a baseline interface that resembles typical web search engines and a Scatter/Gather interface. Both groups performed two lookup and two exploratory health-related tasks. It was found that the baseline group was more likely to rephrase queries and less likely to access general-purpose sites than the Scatter/Gather group when completing exploratory tasks. Otherwise, the two groups did not differ in behavior and task performance, with participants in the Scatter/Gather group largely overlooking the features (key words, clusters, and the recluster function) designed to facilitate the exploration of semantic relationships between information objects, a potentially useful means for users in the rather unfamiliar domain of health. The results suggest a strong effect of users' mental models of search on their use of search interfaces and a high cognitive cost associated with using the Scatter/Gather features. It follows that novel features of a search interface should not only be compatible with users' mental models but also provide sufficient affordance to inform users of how they can be used. Compared with the interface, tasks showed more significant impacts on search behavior. In future studies, more effort should be devoted to identify salient features of health-related information needs.
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Details
- Title
- Evaluation of a Scatter/Gather Interface for Supporting Distinct Health Information Search Tasks
- Creators
- Yan Zhang - The University of Texas at AustinRamona Broussard - The University of Texas at AustinWeimao Ke - Drexel UniversityXuemei Gong - Drexel University
- Publication Details
- Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, v 65(5), pp 1028-1041
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Number of pages
- 14
- Grant note
- Alumni Fellowship from the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Information Science
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:000335583800012
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-84901498905
- Other Identifier
- 991019167430404721
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InCites Highlights
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- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
- Web of Science research areas
- Computer Science, Information Systems
- Information Science & Library Science