A theory of the task-based information retrieval process: A summary and generalisation of a longitudinal study

The aim of this article is threefold. (1) to give a summary of empirical re sults reported earlier on relations between students' problem stages in the course of writing their research proposals for a master's thesis and the i nformation sought, choice of search terms and tactics and relevance assessm ents of the information found for that task; (2) to show how the findings o f the study refine Kuhlthau's model of the information search process in th e field of information retrieval (IR), and (3) to construe a tentative theo ry of a task-based IR process based on the supported hypotheses. The result s of the empirical studies show that there is a close connection between th e students' problem stages (mental model) in the task performance and the i nformation sought, the search tactics used and the assessment of the releva nce and utility of the information found. The corroborated hypotheses expan d 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 pres ented.