SPECULATIONS ON THE MEASUREMENT AND USE OF USER CHARACTERISTICS IN INFORMATION-RETRIEVAL EXPERIMENTATION

Our purpose is to present a recently completed composite view of sever al user studies in information retrieval. This paper contains personal conclusions and speculations based on these studies, rather than form al statistical results, which so often are not comparable from one exp eriment to another. We suggest a taxonomy of user characteristics for such studies, in order to make results comparable. Methods and effects of user training are discussed, then manner of expression of a query or information need, conduct of a search, use of the system command la nguage or its equivalent, analysis by the user of retrieved informatio n, and user satisfaction with outcome. We conclude with suggestions fo r system design and experimental methodology.