The main aspects of XML retrieval are identified by analysing and comparing
the following two behaviours: the behaviour of the assessor when judging the
relevance of returned document components; and the behaviour of users when
interacting with components of XML documents. We argue that the two INEX
relevance dimensions, Exhaustivity and Specificity, are not orthogonal
dimensions; indeed, an empirical analysis of each dimension reveals that the
grades of the two dimensions are correlated to each other. By analysing the
level of agreement between the assessor and the users, we aim at identifying
the best units of retrieval. The results of our analysis show that the highest
level of agreement is on highly relevant and on non-relevant document
components, suggesting that only the end points of the INEX 10-point relevance
scale are perceived in the same way by both the assessor and the users. We
propose a new definition of relevance for XML retrieval and argue that its
corresponding relevance scale would be a better choice for INEX