Investigating Query Formulation Assistance for Children

Popular tools used to search for online resources are tuned to satisfy a broad category of users—primarily adults. Because children have specific needs, these tools may not always be successful in offering the right level of support in their quest for information. While search tools often provide query assistance, children still face many difficulties expressing their information needs in the form of a query. In this paper, we share results from our ongoing research work focused on understanding children\u27s interactions with query suggestions and their preferences with respect to suggestions offered by a general-purpose strategy versus a counterpart designed exclusively for children. Our goal is to inform researchers and developers about when it is necessary to turn to technologies tailored exclusively for children and to further outline needs that should be addressed when it comes to designing query-formulation-related technology for children

Where a Little Change Makes a Big Difference:A Preliminary Exploration of Children’s Queries

This paper contributes to the discussion initiated in a recent SIGIR paper describing a gap in the information retrieval (IR) literature on query understanding–where they come from and whether they serve their purpose. Particularly the connection between query variability and search engines regarding consistent and equitable access to all users. We focus on a user group typically underserved: children. Using preliminary experiments (based on logs collected in the classroom context) and arguments grounded in children IR literature, we emphasize the importance of dedicating research efforts to interpreting queries formulated by children and the information needs they elicit. We also outline open problems and possible research directions to advance knowledge in this area, not just for children but also for other often-overlooked user groups and contexts.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Web Information System

Context Sensitive Search String Composition Algorithm using User Intention to Handle Ambiguous Keywords

Finding the required URL among the first few result pages of a search engine is still a challenging task. This may require number of reformulations of the search string thus adversely affecting user's search time. Query ambiguity and polysemy are major reasons for not obtaining relevant results in the top few result pages. Efficient query composition and data organization are necessary for getting effective results. Context of the information need and the user intent may improve the autocomplete feature of existing search engines. This research proposes a Funnel Mesh-5 algorithm (FM5) to construct a search string taking into account context of information need and user intention with three main steps 1) Predict user intention with user profiles and the past searches via weighted mesh structure 2) Resolve ambiguity and polysemy of search strings with context and user intention 3) Generate a personalized disambiguated search string by query expansion encompassing user intention and predicted query. Experimental results for the proposed approach and a comparison with direct use of search engine are presented. A comparison of FM5 algorithm with K Nearest Neighbor algorithm for user intention identification is also presented. The proposed system provides better precision for search results for ambiguous search strings with improved identification of the user intention. Results are presented for English language dataset as well as Marathi (an Indian language) dataset of ambiguous search strings.

'Google Speak': The discursive practices of search in home-education

Learning with technology is increasingly understood to be a social process involving unique and telling discourses. An emerging research agenda has resulted, investigating the links between ‘talk’ and student technological practices but is yet to include home-education. Preliminary evidence exists of a relationship between particular types of ‘talk’ and success with particular online activities, namely online search. This may prove especially pertinent to home-educators who report that their most prolific online activities are those reliant upon search engines like Google. This paper presents select findings from a study into online search and the associated discursive practices among early primary students and their parent-educators in Australia. Data from observations, tests and interviews with five home-educating families were analysed recursively using a system guided by Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis.  Specifically, this paper seeks to investigate: which discursive practices are privileged in these sites during online search; the extent to which these practices contribute to relations of power and the extent to which these practices are found alongside effective online search.  Findings revealed a prevalence of inequitable discursive practices, those that either inhibited the equal conversational power of speakers or which naturalised inequitable power relations more generally. These discursive practices were found alongside ineffective online searches. Notwithstanding, participants continued to speak positively about search engines and their educational power. This rhetoric-reality gap is theorized in the paper as the work of dominant ideologies surrounding technology in education.  Findings can assist the growing number of home-educators and their students to use online search more effectively. Insights regarding links between discursive practice and search practice may also help ensure that discourse helps to maximise the educational benefits associated with online search

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

An investigation into Scottish teenagers’ information literacy and search skills

Introduction. This paper presents the results of a study investigating the information literacy and search skills of young people in Scotland. Method. The participants, secondary school pupils between the ages of 13 and 14 (n=57), completed two out of four different search tasks from the TREC HARD collection, for which the correct answers (i.e. relevant documents) were known. Their interactions with the search system were logged and information about their own perceptions of the task were collected through pre- and post-task questionnaires. Analysis. The log data from the search system was analysed using the R statistical software package to understand the performance and behaviour of the participants when conducting the search tasks. Findings. While we identified some evidence that information literacy and search skills were being employed, overall performance was low with participants often unable to produce successful queries and/or unable to identify relevant documents, even when some were present in the results. Despite assessing their own performance as being good, the pupils struggled to formulate good quality queries to assess documents for relevance, frequently selecting non-relevant sources. Conclusion. Search performance and ability to identify relevant information was generally poor, a fact that participants themselves were frequently unable to recognise. The results also suggest a reliance on complex search assistance tools (such as spell checking and query suggestions), which are common features of major search engines, but not of smaller systems, which pupils are also likely to have to use. Despite the pupils having been giving some information literacy training in the previous year, the results suggest that more needs to be done to help school pupils in searching for and assessing relevant source documents

Searching for Health Information on the Internet: A Study About the Research Behavior of Secondary School Students

Das Internet stellt eine bedeutende Anlaufstelle in der Beschaffung von Gesundheitsinformationen dar, insbesondere für junge Menschen. Für eine gezielte Informationssuche und Quellenbewertung fehlen Kindern und Jugendlichen jedoch oft Wissen und Erfahrung. Der vorliegende Artikel widmet sich dem Online-Rechercheverhalten von Schüler:innen. Die Fragestellungen bezogen sich auf das Rechercheverhalten von Schüler:innen bei der Onlinesuche zu einer vorgegebenen gesundheitsbezogenen Frage. Zudem interessierten Unterschiede im Rechercheverhalten nach Geschlecht und Klassenstufe sowie der Zusammenhang zwischen dem Rechercheverhalten, der internetbezogenen Gesundheitskompetenz und dem Gebrauch internetfähiger Geräte. Mithilfe der Aufzeichnung und Auswertung von Logdaten und einer Fragebogenerhebung wurde von November 2018 bis Februar 2019 das Suchverhalten von 170 österreichischen Schüler:innen der Sekundarstufe I (6., 7. und 8. Klassenstufe) untersucht. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass im Durchschnitt 3,4 Suchanfragen gestellt wurden. Schüler:innen, die häufiger internetfähige Geräte für schulische Zwecke nutzten, stellten mehr Suchanfragen. Weiters stellten Schüler:innen, die das erste Suchresultat anklickten, weniger Suchanfragen und jüngere (6. Klassenstufe) Schüler:innen riefen häufiger das erste Suchresultat auf. Zur Beantwortung der gesundheitsbezogenen Frage wurden vorwiegend Textbestandteile aus wikipedia.org und patienten.thromboseportal.eu kopiert. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass Schüler:innen beim Einschätzen von Gesundheitsinformationen aus mehreren Quellen und Erkennen über die kommerziellen Interessen von Websitebetreiber:innen aufgeklärt werden müssen.The internet is an important source for obtaining health information, especially for young people. However, children and adolescents often lack knowledge and experience in targeted information search and source evaluation. The present study focuses on the health-related online research behavior of secondary school students. Specifically, it aimed to examine differences in the students’ research behavior by gender and grade as well as correlations between research behavior, internet-related health literacy, and access to internet-enabled devices. An online questionnaire as well as recorded and analyzed log data were used to gather information about the research behavior of 170 Austrian secondary school students in Grades 6–8. Results show that on average, students performed 3.4 search queries to answer a specified health-related question. Students who used internet-enabled devices more frequently for school purposes per­formed more search queries. In addition, students who clicked on the first search result performed less search queries. Younger (sixth-grade) students were more likely to access the first search result in the list. To answer the health-related question, text components were mainly copied from wikipedia.org and patienten.thromboseportal.eu. The results indicate that students need to be trained to evaluate health information from multiple sources and to recognize commercial interests of website operators