161,880 research outputs found
Large-scale log analysis of digital reading
In this paper, we address daily reading practices of the general public in Russia analyzing 10 months of log data from the commercial ebook site Bookmate. We study different reading characteristics with ebooks, i.e. the reading volume and preferences, reading schedule, reading speed and reading style (including parallel reading patterns and book abandonment rates), with respect to reader gender, book length and genre of the book. We find that book genres impact certain reading behaviors, while gender differences or book length seem to play less of a role in ebook reading. Parallel book reading and book abandonment occur very frequently, possibly pointing towards changing reading behaviors in the ebook environment. The obtained insights demonstrate the high potential of log analysis for book reading studies. Copyright © 2016 by Association for Information Science and Technolog
Exploring the information behaviour of users of Welsh Newspapers Online through web log analysis
Purpose – Webometric techniques have been applied to many websites and online resources,
especially since the launch of Google Analytics (GA). To date, though, there has been little
consideration of information behaviour in relation to digitised newspaper collections. The purpose of
this paper is to address a perceived gap in the literature by providing an account of user behaviour in
the newly launched Welsh Newspapers Online (WNO).
Design/methodology/approach – The author collected webometric data for WNO using GA and
web server content logs. These were analysed to identify patterns of engagement and user behaviour,
which were then considered in relation to existing information behaviour.
Findings – Use of WNO, while reminiscent of archival information seeking, can be understood as
centring on the web interface rather than the digitised material. In comparison to general web browsing,
users are much more deeply engaged with the resource. This engagement incorporates reading online,
but users’ information seeking utilises website search and browsing functionality rather than filtering in
newspaper material. Information seeking in digitised newspapers resembles the model of the “user” more
closely than that of the “reader”, a value-laden distinction which needs further unpacking.
Research limitations/implications – While the behaviour discussed in this paper is likely to be
more widely representative, a larger longitudinal data set would increase the study’s significance.
Additionally, the methodology of this paper can only tell us what users are doing, and further research
is needed to identify the drivers for this behaviour.
Originality/value – This study provides important insights into the underinvestigated area of
digitised newspaper collections, and shows the importance of webometric methods in analysing online
user behaviour
Reliability and validity of a domain-specific last 7-d sedentary time questionnaire
Purpose: The objective of this study is to examine test-retest reliability, criterion validity, and absolute agreement of a self-report, last 7-d sedentary behavior questionnaire (SIT-Q-7d), which assesses total daily sedentary time as an aggregate of sitting/lying down in five domains (meals, transportation, occupation, nonoccupational screen time, and other sedentary time). Dutch (DQ) and English (EQ) versions of the questionnaire were examined.
Methods: Fifty-one Flemish adults (ages 39.4 +/- 11.1 yr) wore a thigh accelerometer (activPAL3 (TM)) and simultaneously kept a domain log for 7 d. The DQ was subsequently completed twice (median test-retest interval: 3.3 wk). Thigh-acceleration sedentary time was log annotated to create comparable domain-specific and total sedentary time variables. Four hundred two English adults (ages 49.6 +/- 7.3 yr) wore a combined accelerometer and HR monitor (Actiheart (R)) for 6 d to objectively measure total sedentary time. The EQ was subsequently completed twice (median test-retest interval: 3.4 wk). In both samples, the questionnaire reference frame overlapped with the criterion measure administration period. All participants had five or more valid days of criterion data, including one or more weekend day.
Results: Test-retest reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient (95% CI)) was fair to good for total sedentary time (DQ: 0.68 (0.50-0.81); EQ: 0.53 (0.44-0.62)) and poor to excellent for domain-specific sedentary time (DQ: from 0.36 (0.10-0.57) (meals) to 0.66 (0.46-0.79) (occupation); EQ: from 0.45 (0.35-0.54) (other sedentary time) to 0.76 (0.71-0.81) (meals)). For criterion validity (Spearman rho), significant correlations were found for total sedentary time (DQ: 0.52; EQ: 0.22; all P <0.001). Compared with domain-specific criterion variables (DQ), modest-to-strong correlations were found for domain-specific sedentary time (from 0.21 (meals) to 0.76 (P < 0.001) (screen time)). The questionnaire generally overestimated sedentary time compared with criterion measures.
Conclusion: The SIT-Q-7d appears to be a useful tool for ranking individuals in large-scale observational studies examining total and domain-specific sitting
Why We Read Wikipedia
Wikipedia is one of the most popular sites on the Web, with millions of users
relying on it to satisfy a broad range of information needs every day. Although
it is crucial to understand what exactly these needs are in order to be able to
meet them, little is currently known about why users visit Wikipedia. The goal
of this paper is to fill this gap by combining a survey of Wikipedia readers
with a log-based analysis of user activity. Based on an initial series of user
surveys, we build a taxonomy of Wikipedia use cases along several dimensions,
capturing users' motivations to visit Wikipedia, the depth of knowledge they
are seeking, and their knowledge of the topic of interest prior to visiting
Wikipedia. Then, we quantify the prevalence of these use cases via a
large-scale user survey conducted on live Wikipedia with almost 30,000
responses. Our analyses highlight the variety of factors driving users to
Wikipedia, such as current events, media coverage of a topic, personal
curiosity, work or school assignments, or boredom. Finally, we match survey
responses to the respondents' digital traces in Wikipedia's server logs,
enabling the discovery of behavioral patterns associated with specific use
cases. For instance, we observe long and fast-paced page sequences across
topics for users who are bored or exploring randomly, whereas those using
Wikipedia for work or school spend more time on individual articles focused on
topics such as science. Our findings advance our understanding of reader
motivations and behavior on Wikipedia and can have implications for developers
aiming to improve Wikipedia's user experience, editors striving to cater to
their readers' needs, third-party services (such as search engines) providing
access to Wikipedia content, and researchers aiming to build tools such as
recommendation engines.Comment: Published in WWW'17; v2 fixes caption of Table
Continued Progress: Promising Evidence on Personalized Learning
The findings are grouped into four sections. The first section on student achievement finds that there were positive effects on student mathematics and reading performance and that the lowest-performing students made substantial gains relative to their peers. The second section on implementation and the perceptions of stakeholders finds that adoption of personalized learning practices varied considerably. Personalized learning practices that are direct extensions of current practice were more common, but implementation of some of the more challenging personalized learning strategies was less common. The third section relates implementation features to outcomes and identifies three elements of personalized learning that were being implemented in tandem in the schools with the largest achievement effects. Finally, the fourth section compares teachers' and students' survey responses to a national sample and finds some differences, such as teachers' greater use of practices that support competency-based learning and greater use of technology for personalization in the schools in this study with implementation data
What do faculty and students really think about e-books?
Purpose - The purpose of this article is to report on a large-scale survey that was carried Out to assess academic users' awareness, perceptions and existing levels of use of e-books. The survey also seeks to find out about the purposes to which electronic books were put, and to obtain an understanding of the most effective library marketing and communication channels.Design/methodology/approach - An e-mail invitation to participate in the survey was distributed to all UCL staff and students (approximately 27,000) in November 2006, and 1,818 completions were received, an effective response rate of at least 6.7 per cent. Statistical analyses were carried out on the data using Software Package for Social Sciences (SPSS).Findings - The survey findings point to various ways in which user uptake and acceptance of e-books may be encouraged. Book discovery behaviour, a key issue for publishers and librarians in both print and electronic environments, emerges as a critical focus for service delivery and enhancement.Originality/value - The survey is part of an action research project, CIBER's SuperBook, that will further investigate the issues raised in this initial benchmarking survey using deep log analysis and qualitative methods. The paper partly fills the gap in the literature on e-books which has mainly focused on usage and not the users
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Exploration and Exploitation of Victorian Science in Darwin's Reading Notebooks
Search in an environment with an uncertain distribution of resources involves
a trade-off between exploitation of past discoveries and further exploration.
This extends to information foraging, where a knowledge-seeker shifts between
reading in depth and studying new domains. To study this decision-making
process, we examine the reading choices made by one of the most celebrated
scientists of the modern era: Charles Darwin. From the full-text of books
listed in his chronologically-organized reading journals, we generate topic
models to quantify his local (text-to-text) and global (text-to-past) reading
decisions using Kullback-Liebler Divergence, a cognitively-validated,
information-theoretic measure of relative surprise. Rather than a pattern of
surprise-minimization, corresponding to a pure exploitation strategy, Darwin's
behavior shifts from early exploitation to later exploration, seeking unusually
high levels of cognitive surprise relative to previous eras. These shifts,
detected by an unsupervised Bayesian model, correlate with major intellectual
epochs of his career as identified both by qualitative scholarship and Darwin's
own self-commentary. Our methods allow us to compare his consumption of texts
with their publication order. We find Darwin's consumption more exploratory
than the culture's production, suggesting that underneath gradual societal
changes are the explorations of individual synthesis and discovery. Our
quantitative methods advance the study of cognitive search through a framework
for testing interactions between individual and collective behavior and between
short- and long-term consumption choices. This novel application of topic
modeling to characterize individual reading complements widespread studies of
collective scientific behavior.Comment: Cognition pre-print, published February 2017; 22 pages, plus 17 pages
supporting information, 7 pages reference
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