Search results

The purpose of this research is to provide insights into the daily search strategies of users, which can inform the enhancement of search experiences across multiple applications. By understanding how users navigate and interact with different apps during their search processes, the study seeks to contribute to the design of more intuitive and user-friendly app systems.

This study employs a mixed-methods approach to analyze users' daily search strategies in a natural cross-app interactive environment. Data collection was conducted using the Critical Incident Technique and the Micro-Moment Time Line, involving 204 participants to capture their real-time search experiences. Open coding techniques were utilized to categorize sequential search tactics, while the PrefixSpan algorithm was applied to identify patterns in frequently applied search strategies.

The study findings unveil a comprehensive framework that includes a variety of intra-app search tactics and inter-app switching tactics. Five predominant search strategies were identified: Iterative querying, Selective results adoption, Share-related, Recommended browsing, and Organizational results strategies. These strategies reflect the nuanced ways in which users engage with apps to fulfill their information needs.

This research represents a pioneering effort in systematically identifying and categorizing daily search strategies within a natural cross-app interaction context. It offers original contributions to the field by combining intra-app and inter-app tactics, providing a holistic view of user behavior. The implications of these findings are significant for app developers and designers, as they can leverage this knowledge to improve app functionality and user manuals, ultimately enhancing the overall search experience for users.

Cross-app interactive search has become the new normal, but the characteristics of their tactic transitions are still unclear. This study investigated the transitions of daily search tactics during the cross-app interaction search process.

In total, 204 young participants' impressive cross-app search experiences in real daily situations were collected. The search tactics and tactic transition sequences in their search process were obtained by open coding. Statistical analysis and sequence analysis were used to analyze the frequently applied tactics, the frequency and probability of tactic transitions and the tactic transition sequences representing characteristics of tactic transitions occurring at the beginning, middle and ending phases. 

Creating the search statement (Creat), evaluating search results (EvalR), evaluating an individual item (EvalI) and keeping a record (Rec) were the most frequently applied tactics. The frequency and probability of transitions differed significantly between different tactic types. “Creat? EvalR? EvalI? Rec” is the typical path; Initiate the search in various ways and modifying the search statement were highlighted at the beginning phase; iteratively creating the search statement is highlighted in the middle phase; Moreover, utilization and feedback of information are highlighted at the ending phase. 

The present study shed new light on tactic transitions in the cross-app interactive environment to explore information search behaviour. The findings of this work provide targeted suggestions for optimizing APP query, browsing and monitoring systems.

Bates' information search tactics have been influential in the practice and teaching of online searching since they were published in 1979. This paper is about using information search tactics to search the internet, and aims to present a set of tactics useful in the practice and teaching of internet searching.

Tactics used on the internet were gathered from the literature, web sites, and the author's experience of internet searching. These were compared with the information search tactics, and refined into a set of internet search tactics.

The article presents 34 internet search tactics: 18 of the original Bates tactics, interpreted in the context of the internet, and 16 new tactics. While many of the information search tactics are relevant, effective internet searching requires recognition of the role of relevancy ranking and full text searching in search engines. The uncontrolled nature of the internet means that evaluation of information resources is an integral part of internet searching, so a group of evaluation tactics have been proposed.

The tactics provide a framework for teaching effective internet searching.

Bates' information search tactics do not appear to have been applied as a whole to searching the internet. The proposed tactics will be useful for librarians and researchers who need to carry out effective searching on the internet, and for information literacy education. Research into information seeking and search interfaces will be informed by the tactics.

The purpose of this paper is to elaborate the picture of strategies and tactics for information seeking and searching by focusing on the heuristic elements of such strategies and tactics.

A conceptual analysis of a sample of 31 pertinent investigations was conducted to find out how researchers have approached heuristics in the above context since the 1970s. To achieve this, the study draws on the ideas produced within the research programmes on Heuristics and Biases, and Fast and Frugal Heuristics.

Researchers have approached the heuristic elements in three major ways. First, these elements are defined as general level constituents of browsing strategies in particular. Second, heuristics are approached as search tips. Third, there are examples of conceptualizations of individual heuristics. Familiarity heuristic suggests that people tend to prefer sources that have worked well in similar situations in the past. Recognition heuristic draws on an all-or-none distinction of the information objects, based on cues such as information scent. Finally, representativeness heuristic is based on recalling similar instances of events or objects and judging their typicality in terms of genres, for example.

As the study focuses on three heuristics only, the findings cannot be generalized to describe the use of all heuristic elements of strategies and tactics for information seeking and searching.

The study pioneers by providing an in-depth analysis of the ways in which the heuristic elements are conceptualized in the context of information seeking and searching. The findings contribute to the elaboration of the conceptual issues of information behavior research.

The aim of this article is threefold: (1) to give a summary of empirical results reported earlier on relations between students‘ problem stages in the course of writing their research proposals for a master’s thesis and the information sought, choice of search terms and tactics and relevance assessments of the information found for that task; (2) to show how the findings of the study refine Kuhlthau‘s model of the information search process in the field of information retrieval (IR); and (3) to construe a tentative theory of a task‐based IR process based on the supported hypotheses. The results of the empirical studies show that there is a close connection between the students’ problem stages (mental model) in the task performance and the information sought, the search tactics used and the assessment of the relevance and utility of the information found. The corroborated hypotheses expand the ideas in Kuhlthau‘s model in the domain of IR. A theory of task‐based information searching based on the empirical findings of the study is presented.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to develop a visualized search system utilizing graphical images to represent the story elements and concepts to help elementary students describe and seek their desired storybooks; and second, to explore the effect of the proposed visualized search system on elementary students’ tactics, success, and motivation for seeking storybooks.

A quasi-experimental approach was conducted with a sample of 61 elementary students in this study. The students’ tactics, motivation and the success of their storybook searching were addressed as dependent variables for further comparisons of the visualized searching system and a conventional keyword searching system.

The results revealed that the students in the experimental group exhibited more frequent tactics and greater motivation for storybook searching than those in the control group. Further χ² analysis indicated a significant relationship between the searching interface and the success of the students’ storybook searching.

This paper proposes a new visual search approach which allows young children to search for storybooks by describing an intended storybook in terms of its characters, objects, or the background colors of the cover page. The findings provide some evidence of the effectiveness of the visualized searching interface in terms of promoting young children’s learning through storybook searching and reading activities.

The purpose of this paper is to elaborate the picture of strategies for information searching and seeking by reviewing the conceptualizations on this topic in the field of library and information science (LIS).

The study draws on Henry Mintzberg’s idea of strategy as plan and strategy as pattern in a stream of actions. Conceptual analysis of 57 LIS investigations was conducted to find out how researchers have approached the above aspects in the characterizations of information search and seeking strategies.

In the conceptualizations of information search and information seeking strategies, the aspect of strategy as plan is explicated most clearly in text-book approaches describing the steps of rational web searching. Most conceptualizations focus on the aspect of strategy as pattern in a stream of actions. This approach places the main emphasis on realized strategies, either deliberate or emergent. Deliberate strategies indicate how information search or information seeking processes were oriented by intentions that existed previously. Emergent strategies indicate how patterns in information seeking and seeking developed in the absence of intentions, or despite them.

The conceptualizations of the shifts in information seeking and searching strategies were excluded from the study. Similarly, conceptualizations of information search or information retrieval tactics were not examined.

The study pioneers by providing an in-depth analysis of the ways in which the key aspects of strategy are conceptualized in the classifications and typologies of information seeking and searching strategies. The findings contribute to the elaboration of the conceptual space of information behaviour research.

The aim of this study is to explore to which extent searching by medical students in Medline produces information items useful for writing an essay measured by precision and relative recall as perceived by the students, the proportion of cited items, and their utilization on four dimensions of the essay writing task evaluated by external assessors. It also aims to study interrelations of search process and outcome.

The study subjects were 42 third year medical students attending a class on Diagnostic and therapy. Searching in Medline was a part of their assignment of essay writing. The data consist of students' printed logs of Medline searches, students' assessments of the usefulness of the references retrieved, a questionnaire concerning the search process, and evaluation scores of the essays given by the teachers of the class. Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated for answering the research questions.

The paper finds that precision and relative recall were not associated with evaluation scores in three of the four dimensions assessed. Some of the process variables were associated with precision and with assessment scores in two of the four dimensions assessed. Citing rate was negatively associated with recall. It seems that precision and recall are only weakly, if at all, associated to the use of information in the documents retrieved for writing the essay. Precision and relative recall are not associated to the way information in the retrieved items is used for performing the task. Users evidently look for a sufficient number of documents containing enough information for progressing in their task. Precision and recall are not sufficient measures in evaluating IR systems, but they have to be completed by other measures indicating the impact of the system on users’ task performance.

The paper provides useful information on students' information search process.

Moves, or changes in query formulation, are made to resolve three problem situations: (1) when retrieved sets are too large; (2) when they are too small; or (3) when retrieved sets are off‐target. Observation and analysis of about ninety searches resulted in a list of eighteen operational moves, or modifications of query formulation, that keep the meaning of query components unchanged, and twelve conceptual moves which change the meaning of query components. All these moves are explained and then related to search tactics and strategies.

This paper discusses the differences in search pattern transitions for mobile phone, tablet and desktop devices by mining the transaction log data of a library online public access catalogue (OPAC). We aimed to analyze the impacts of different devices on user search behavior and provide constructive suggestions for the development of library OPACs on different devices.

Based on transaction logs which are 9 GB in size and contain 16,140,509 records of a university library OPAC, statistics and clustering were used to analyze the differences in search pattern transitions on different devices in terms of two aspects: search field transition patterns and query reformulation patterns.

Search field transition patterns are influenced by the input function and user interfaces of different devices. As reformulation times increase, the differences between query reformulation patterns among different devices decrease.

Mobile-side libraries need to optimize user interfaces, for example by setting web page labels and improving input capabilities. Desk-side libraries can add more suggestive content on the interface.

Unlike previous studies, which have analyzed web search, this paper focuses on library OPAC search. The search function of mobile phones, tablets and desktops were found to be asymptotic, which was a good illustration of how devices have a large impact on user search behavior.