Order effect on relevance judgment: An exploratory study on the detection of quantum interference

Abstract

This poster explores the existence of order effect on relevance judgment, especially the interference of one document on the other while evaluating the relevance. A between‐subject experiment with 78 undergraduate students was reported. The results demonstrated the statistically significant existence of order effect for some topics and spotted quantum interference while evaluating the relevance of documents. This preliminary study provides insights into how documents' evaluation is contextualized and interdependent with each other. It has some implications for future theoretical and practical research on the human cognitive aspect of relevance judgment in information retrieval.