Using History to Study Information Seeking Behavior

has focused on approaches that provide a snapshot in time of what is going on in a household. This poster explores the use of history to examine changes over time in both information questions and information sources used in the prosecution of everyday life activities in America. The study is based on identifying endogenous and exogenous forces to the activity at hand, and seeing how these forces cause change. A secondary question raised in this poster is the largely unexamined belief that the Internet has played an exceptional role in changing the nature of everyday information seeking behavior in America. The case of 100 years of car buying in America is used as a particular example, drawn from a larger study of nine everyday American activities

A new model of information seeking stopping behavior

textWeb search engines play an important role in peoples daily life. Widespread usage of search engine poses continuous challenges for designing information search systems that can bring people best user experience. To address this challenges, it is particularly important to understand how people seek information. In spite of a large number of studies on human information seeking, the reasons of when and why users terminate information seeking are uncertain and many proposed theories have a limited capability for predicting this type of behavior. In our study, we conducted lab-based experiments, where participants performed assigned information search tasks on Wikipedia pages. Inspired by theories and methods from cognitive science, we captured participants information search behavior such as query usage, search engine result page visits, Wikipedia page visits, and task duration. Additionally, we used eye-tracking techniques to examine the number of people's eye fixations. Using exploratory factor analysis (EFA), we have confirmed exploratory and validation processes can be distinguished based on different types of costs associated with each of them. Based on the findings of the regression tree model, evaluating the cost and gain in the validation process provide important feedback to people for controlling and monitoring their information search.Informatio

Software Engineers' Information Seeking Behavior in Change Impact Analysis - An Interview Study

Software engineers working in large projects must navigate complex information landscapes. Change Impact Analysis (CIA) is a task that relies on engineers' successful information seeking in databases storing, e.g., source code, requirements, design descriptions, and test case specifications. Several previous approaches to support information seeking are task-specific, thus understanding engineers' seeking behavior in specific tasks is fundamental. We present an industrial case study on how engineers seek information in CIA, with a particular focus on traceability and development artifacts that are not source code. We show that engineers have different information seeking behavior, and that some do not consider traceability particularly useful when conducting CIA. Furthermore, we observe a tendency for engineers to prefer less rigid types of support rather than formal approaches, i.e., engineers value support that allows flexibility in how to practically conduct CIA. Finally, due to diverse information seeking behavior, we argue that future CIA support should embrace individual preferences to identify change impact by empowering several seeking alternatives, including searching, browsing, and tracing.Comment: Accepted for publication in the proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Program Comprehensio

Information Seeking Behavior of Engineers

Research paper for SI 551 Information Seeking Behavior with Dr Soo Young RiehEngineers are largely specialists trained in areas such as mechanical, chemical, and electrical engineering, yet they work in a broad range of environments, such as research and development, design, testing, manufacturing, construction, management, consulting and sales. Engineers need to seek highly specialized information when working in the industry and need information to provide a product, system, process or service to their customer. The purpose of this study is to understand how engineers find the information they need to effectively perform their job. What sources do most engineers turn to first and why? Do they depend on their corporate library, do they subscribe to databases? Do they read reports, catalogs, handbooks, and trade journals? How do engineers organize their own information - do they form their own systems for papers, computer files, drawings, etc? Are there any cultural barriers that impede their search for information? By studying practicing engineers, we would like to try to understand how they solve their problems when searching for information at work.https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/135952/6/Information Seeking Behavior of Engineers.pdf-

Information Behavior in the Mobile Environment: An Overview

As smartphones become ubiquitous, they increasingly influence the way in which students seek and use information. It is important to understand emerging information behavior as a result of wide spread use of smartphones. This paper provides an overview of information behavior in the mobile environment. Gender differences in mobile information seeking are discussed. People interact with mobile information in varied and unpredictable locations or while in transit. The mobility of information engagement is an important issue that human information theory should embrace

Italian Wikipedia and epilepsy: an infodemiological study of online information-seeking behavior

Wikipedia is the most commonly accessed source of health information by both healthcare professionals and the lay public worldwide. We aimed to evaluate information-seeking behavior of Internet users searching the Italian Wikipedia for articles related to epilepsy and its treatment. Using Pageviews Analysis, we assessed the total and mean monthly views of articles from the Italian Wikipedia devoted to epilepsy, epileptic syndromes, seizure type, and antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) from January 1, 2015 to October 31, 2017. We compared the views of the article on epilepsy with those of articles focusing on Alzheimer's disease, migraine, multiple sclerosis, syncope, and stroke and adjusted all results for crude disease prevalence. With the only exception of the article on multiple sclerosis, the adjusted views for the Italian Wikipedia article on epilepsy were higher than those for the other neurological disorders. The most viewed articles on seizure type were devoted to tonic-clonic seizure, typical absence seizure, tonic convulsive seizures, and clonic convulsive seizures. The most frequently accessed articles on epilepsy syndromes were about temporal lobe epilepsy and Lennox-Gastaut syndrome. The most frequently viewed articles on AEDs were devoted to valproic acid, carbamazepine, and levetiracetam. Wikipedia searches seem to mirror patients' fears and worries about epilepsy more than its actual epidemiology. The ultimate reasons for searching online remain unknown. Epileptologists and epilepsy scientific societies should make greater efforts to work jointly with Wikipedia to convey more accurate and up-to-date information about epilepsy