Age-related Differences in the Content of Search Queries when Reformulating

Abstract

This study investigated the change in the content of the queries when performing reformulations in relation to age and task difficulty. Results showed that both generalization and specialization strategies were applied significantly more often for difficult tasks compared to simple tasks. Young participants were found to use specialization strategy significantly more often than old participants. Generalization strategy was also used significantly more often by young participants, especially for difficult tasks. Young participants were found to reformulate much longer than old participants. The semantic relevance of queries with the target information was found to be significantly higher for difficult tasks compared to simple tasks. It showed a decreasing trend across reformulations for old participants and remained constant for young participants, indicating that as old participants reformulated, they produced queries that were further away from the target information. Implications of these findings for design of information search systems are discussed.

Informationskompetenz ist keine Frage der Schnelligkeit

“…Younger users made more frequent and faster changes between search phases. This gives them an advantage in processing a task that requires collecting information from different sources simply due to their higher processing speed (a result similar to that found by Karanam and van Oostendorp 2016). The three elders (> 60) were aware of their slower progress, but did not see this as a problem: «I was [...] a bit slow (…), that doesn't bother me» (F60: 143) or: «Thank God it's not time that matters here» (M74).…”

“…Younger people are more likely to switch between different sites, are more impulsive in their selection, and make more mistakes (Youmans et al 2013). For complex tasks, older people may even have an advantage because they can refer to their crystallized knowledge (Karanam and van Oostendorp 2016).…”

Feedback on the Semantic Relevance of Search Queries

“…We briefly describe two studies that did examine effects of age and task difficulty on reformulating queries. The focus in these studies [7,12] was whether the relevance of the reformulated queries semantically increased compared to the preceding queries. For this purpose, the semantic relevance of queries (SRQ) using Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) was computed [13].…”

“…Information problem solving tasks frequently require users to issue more than one query and to reformulate. Older adults find it often difficult to reformulate their previous unsuccessful query, leading to suboptimal search performance [6,7]. In empirical literature, there has not been much attention to semantic (knowledge-related) aspects of reformulations and that is the focus of the current study.…”

Beyond Participatory Design: Towards a Model for Teaching Seniors Application Design

“…Teaching older adults to use ICT is a key concern for many governments [26]. Studies have been conducted in order to determine ways of engaging older adults in ICT -from examining their first interactions with new devices [8], through determining their habits in using mobile devices [24] and strategies while searching the Internet [22], to studies on overcoming computer anxiety in seniors [9].…”