D. Nahl et C. Tenopir, AFFECTIVE AND COGNITIVE SEARCHING BEHAVIOR OF NOVICE END-USERS OF A FULL-TEXT DATABASE, Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 47(4), 1996, pp. 276-286
Citations number
37
Categorie Soggetti
Information Science & Library Science","Information Science & Library Science
Novice end users were given 2 hours of training in searching a full-te
xt magazine database (Magazine ASAP(TM)) on DIALOG, Subjects searched
during three to four sessions in the presence of a trained monitor who
prompted them to think aloud throughout the sessions, Qualitative ana
lysis of the transcripts and transaction logs yielded empirical inform
ation on user variables (purpose, motivation, satisfaction), uses of t
he database, move types, and every question users asked during the sea
rches, The spontaneous, naturalistic questions were categorized accord
ing to affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor speech acts, Results sho
w that most of the searches were performed for the self and were work-
related, The most common use of the database was to retrieve full-text
articles online and to download and print them out rather than read t
hem on screen, The majority of searches were judged satisfactory, Inno
vative uses included browsing for background information and obtaining
contextualized sentences for language teaching, Searchers made twice
as many moves to limit sets as moves to expand sets, Affective questio
ns outnumbered cognitive and sensorimotor questions by two to one, Thi
s preponderance of affective micro-information needs during searching
might be addressed by new system functions.