Planning prompts and indexed terms in textbook search tasks.

Abstract

Text search is a type of strategic reading that involves locating specific goal-relevant information. Previous research has indicated that college and high school students often exhibit inefficient or unsuccessful text-search performance. Consequently, the effects of 2 manipulations on text-search performance were investigated: (a) the presence of indexed terms in a text-search task and (b) the use of a planning prompt before beginning a task. Thirty-four college students engaged in 6 text-search tasks. Half of these tasks contained terms that could be used in an index; half required that a search term be generated. Half of the subjects were randomly assigned to a prompt condition in which they were prompted to plan their search before beginning each task. The results indicated that a planning prompt raised the success level of search performance, as did the presence of terms that were searchable in the textbook's index.An office worker needs to locate a particular command in a word processing manual or on a pop-up "help" menu on a computer screen. A student seeks information from an encyclopedia on types of viruses. A travel agent uses a database to locate the cheapest flight to Los Angeles. In each case, these readers are seeking specific information relevant to a particular goal. In contrast to most reading comprehension research in which the goal is to understand or recall the contents of a passage (Calfee & Drum, 1986), the goal is to avoid examining the entire contents of the material. Instead, these readers would use features such as an index, table of contents, or headings to eliminate unnecessary information while focusing on the relevant portions. In other words, these readers are engaging in a type of strategic reading: reading to locate specific information.Students at both the elementary school (Armbruster & Armstrong, 1993;Armbruster & Gudbrandsen, 1986) and secondary school (Smith & Feathers, 1983) levels are expected to engage in tasks such as locating answers to questions, locating evidence supporting their conclusions, and locating specific information for reports. In the workplace, research indicates that reading to locate information is more common than reading for any other purpose (Guthrie, Seifert,

Fifth Graders' Search for Information in a Textbook

“…For example, prompting students to plan before searchinga manipulation of the goal formation component of the search process-improved their success rate (Dreher & Brown, 1993). Dreher and Guthrie (1990) found that category selection and information extraction accounted for much of the difficulty in their study.…”

“…Less successful older searchers have been found to be unsystematic in their approach . But as noted, when older searchers were asked to plan before engaging in a search task, they were more likely to be successful (Dreher & Brown, 1993). Similarly, Kobasigawa's research-although it dealt with what children said they would do rather than actual performance-suggests that schoolchildren's search performance may be facilitated by guiding questions that serve to remind children of available information-access features and search-appropriate behavior.…”

“…Symons and Pressley (1993) found that college students were able to locate only about half the answers to factual questions when they searched a familiar-topic textbook and were even less successful with a textbook on an unfamiliar topic. Dreher and Brown (1993) found that college students did better on search tasks containing terms that were in a textbook's index compared to tasks for which they had to generate a term that could be searched in an index. But for both kinds of task, students were more successful if they were prompted to engage in planning before they started their search.…”

Student questioning: A componential analysis

“…Research on search behavior focuses on the strategic inquiry behavior of students who wish to locate specific information in a book or computer (e.g., Byrnes & Guthrie 1992;Dreher 1993;Dreher & Brown 1993;Yussen, Stright, & Payne 1993). This research shows how students find (and often don't find) their way through accessing aids such as indexes, tables of content, glossaries, and headings to the right place in the body text.…”

“…In general, the studies show that students' search strategies are positively affected when the students know the architecture of the system (e.g., book or database) or when they possess some knowledge of the topic for which they search information. Recently, the goal formation component in this search behavior (i.e., the formulation problem) has become a topic of research (Dreher & Brown 1993).…”