THE NATURE OF SITUATION ASSESSMENT IN NEW INFORMATION-RETRIEVAL ENVIRONMENTS

This paper describes a model of information retrieval as social intera ction, which distinguishes between three types of information interact ion goals: those which are: 1) task and 2) topically oriented; and tho se which are 3) centered around situation assessment. The concept of s ituation assessment (SA) refers to a process of situational inference in which people attempt to understand the social dimensions of the int eraction space they are in. Based upon the theory of social interactio n, four dimensions of SA are identified: assessment of 1) self-perform ance; 2) norm of interaction; 3) communication conventions; and 4) int ersubjectivity. An empirical investigation of the nature of situation assessment was conducted in one new information retrieval environment. Fifty experienced online searchers performed searches using an IR sys tem that contained several features that were new to them. Verbal prot ocol data were content analyzed for the appearance of assessment expre ssions. Results of this study suggest that situation assessment is an important cognitive activity in new information retrieval environments . SA expressions appear more frequently than do those related to eithe r task or topical relevance. At the same time, situation assessment is found to be negatively associated with one performance measure looked at here-number of documents saved by searchers. Implications of these results for IR theory and system design are discussed in the conclusi on.