Search Engine Users

Presents findings from a survey conducted in May and June 2004. Looks at confidence in search ability; satisfaction with results; overall trust of search engines; and demographic differences among searchers

Youth and Digital Media: From Credibility to Information Quality

Building upon a process-and context-oriented information quality framework, this paper seeks to map and explore what we know about the ways in which young users of age 18 and under search for information online, how they evaluate information, and how their related practices of content creation, levels of new literacies, general digital media usage, and social patterns affect these activities. A review of selected literature at the intersection of digital media, youth, and information quality -- primarily works from library and information science, sociology, education, and selected ethnographic studies -- reveals patterns in youth's information-seeking behavior, but also highlights the importance of contextual and demographic factors both for search and evaluation. Looking at the phenomenon from an information-learning and educational perspective, the literature shows that youth develop competencies for personal goals that sometimes do not transfer to school, and are sometimes not appropriate for school. Thus far, educational initiatives to educate youth about search, evaluation, or creation have depended greatly on the local circumstances for their success or failure

Web Portal Design Guidelines as Identified by Children through the Processes of Design and Evaluation

The Web is an important source of information for school projects, but young users do not always find it easy to locate relevant material. A critical factor in success is the portal through which they search or browse web content. Traditionally web portals have been designed by adults with young users in mind, but there is very little evidence that the latter make use of them. In this paper design guidelines are elaborated for such portals that are based upon focus group and operational evaluations by elementary school students of two prototype web portals designed by two intergenerational teams, each comprising elementary school students and adult designers. The evaluations offer strong support for involving children throughout the design process for portals that both in presentation and functionality reflect the cognitive and affective needs of young users rather than adults

Sometimes the Internet reads the question wrong: children’s search strategies & difficulties

When children search for information on a given topic, how do they go about searching for and retrieving information? What can their information seeking strategies tell us about the development of search interfaces for children's digital libraries, search engines and information repositories? We interviewed New Zealand (NZ) school children to seek insights into how they are conducting information searches during their education

Internet Health Resources

Presents findings from a survey conducted in December 2002. Provides details on the health topics Americans search online and the impact it has on their health care

Regulating Access to Adult Content (with Privacy Preservation)

In the physical world we have well-established mechanisms for keeping children out of adult-only areas. In the virtual world this is generally replaced by self declaration. Some service providers resort to using heavy-weight identification mechanisms, judging adulthood as a side effect thereof. Collection of identification data arguably constitutes an unwarranted privacy invasion in this context, if carried out merely to perform adulthood estimation. This paper presents a mechanism that exploits the adult's more extensive exposure to public media, relying on the likelihood that they will be able to recall details if cued by a carefully chosen picture. We conducted an online study to gauge the viability of this scheme. With our prototype we were able to predict that the user was a child 99% of the time. Unfortunately the scheme also misclassified too many adults. We discuss our results and suggest directions for future research

How Teachers Are Using Technology at Home and in Their Classrooms

A survey of Advanced Placement and National Writing Project teachers shows that digital tools are widely used in their classrooms and professional lives. Yet, many of these high school and middle school teachers worry about digital divides when it comes to their students' access to technology and those who teach low-income students face obstacles in bringing technology into their teaching

America's Online Pursuits: The Changing Picture of Who's Online and What They Do

Provides a broad analysis of survey data collected between March 2000 and August 2003, to illustrate shifting trends in Internet use. Looks at participation by age, gender, race, income, and education level