Empirical studies of collaborative information seeking: a review of methodological issues

Purpose

Information seeking is often performed in collaborative contexts. The research into such collaborative information seeking (CIS) has been proceeding since the 1990s but lacks methodological discussions. The purpose of this paper is to analyze and discuss methodological issues in existing CIS studies.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors systematically review 69 empirical CIS studies.

Findings

The review shows that the most common methods of data collection are lab experiments (43 percent), observation (19 percent) and surveys (16 percent), that the most common methods of data analysis are description (33 percent), statistical testing (29 percent) and content analysis (19 percent) and that CIS studies involve a fairly even mix of novice, intermediate and specialist participants. However, the authors also find that CIS research is dominated by exploratory studies, leaves it largely unexplored in what ways the findings of a study may be specific to the particular study setting, appears to assign primacy to precision at the expense of generalizability, struggles with investigating how CIS activities extend over time and provides data about behavior to a larger extent than about reasons, experiences and especially outcomes.

Research limitations/implications

The major implication of this review is its identification of the need for a shared model to which individual CIS studies can contribute in a cumulative manner. To support the development of such a model, the authors discuss a model of the core CIS process and a model of the factors that trigger CIS.

Originality/value

This study assesses the current state of CIS research, provides guidance for future CIS studies and aims to inspire further methodological discussion.

Exploring the context of visual information seeking

Purpose

Information seeking is an interactive behaviour of the end users with information systems, which occurs in a real environment known as context. Context affects information-seeking behaviour in many different ways. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors that potentially constitute the context of visual information seeking.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors used a Straussian version of grounded theory, a qualitative approach, to conduct the study. Using a purposive sampling method, 28 subjects participated in the study. The data were analysed using open, axial and selective coding in MAXQDA software.

Findings

The contextual factors influencing visual information seeking were classified into seven categories, including: “user characteristics”, “general search features”, “visual search features”, “display of results”, “accessibility of results”, “task type” and “environmental factors”.

Practical/implications

This study contributes to a better understanding of how people conduct searches in and interact with visual search interfaces. Results have important implications for the designers of information retrieval systems.

Originality/value

This paper is among the pioneer studies investigating contextual factors influencing information seeking in visual information retrieval systems.

Collaborative information seeking environments benefiting from holistic ergonomics

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to explore the value of utilising a holistic ergonomic approach, covering engineering, cognitive and social perspectives, to cultivate beneficial and productive collaborative information seeking (CIS) systems and environments, specifically with regard to three main CIS pillars (control, communication and awareness).

Design/methodology/approach

– A qualitative research approach, based on a selective corpus of CIS literature, was utilised to perform a content analysis to note if terms and concepts normally associated with engineering, cognitive and social ergonomics can be used to eliminate terms reflecting issues related to three CIS pillars (control, communication and awareness) that can benefit from a holistic ergonomic approach.

Findings

– The content analysis revealed that a fairly extensive amount of holistic ergonomic terminology is prominent within the CIS literature, therefore establishing a connection between the two disciplines: CIS and ergonomics. This suggests that CIS system issues could benefit from the insights of a holistic ergonomic approach.

Research limitations/implications

– Since this is an exploratory study the scope of CIS literature utilised in the content analysis was limited to a selection considered most important by the authors; this should be supplemented by further research.

Practical implications

– Intended to instigate interest in further exploration of the beneficial and productive implications and practical application of holistic ergonomics in designing CIS systems and environments.

Originality/value

– This is the first research paper in the Library and Information Science literature that explores the potential of utilising holistic ergonomics to cultivate CIS systems and environments.

Geosemantic information retrieval and its performance evaluation

Information-retrieval services can provide users with personalized services about various information that they want on their current location using a variety of mobile devices. The screens of mobile devices are smaller than those of desktop computers. To provide accurate search results that are appropriate for the small screens of mobile devices, we propose a geosemantic information-retrieval method for the mobile environment to provide specific information appropriate for a given user’s requirements by combining context and ontology. To evaluate the performance of the system, we performed experiments to analyse the run time, memory usage, frequency of items and accuracy of the ontology database, and compared it with an existing relational database. The ontology database provided better retrieval than the relational database in terms of accuracy of the data and computational expense.

Evaluating collaborative information seeking – synthesis, suggestions, and structure

Evaluating the performance of collaborative information seeking (CIS) systems and users can be challenging, often more so than individual information-seeking environments. This can be attributed to the complex and dynamic interactions that take place among various users and systems processes in a CIS environment. While some of the aspects of a CIS system or user could be measured by typical assessment techniques from single-user information retrieval/seeking (IR/IS), one often needs to go beyond them to provide a meaningful evaluation, helping to provide not only a sense of performance, but also insights into design decisions (regarding systems) and behavioural trends (regarding users). This article first provides an overview of existing methods and techniques for evaluating CIS ( synthesis). It then extracts valuable directives and advice from the literature that inform evaluation choices ( suggestions). Finally, the article presents a framework for CIS evaluation with two major parts: system-based and user-based ( structure). The proposed framework incorporates various instruments taken from computer and social sciences literature as applicable to CIS evaluations. The lessons from the literature and the framework could serve as important starting points for designing experiments and systems, as well as evaluating system and user performances in CIS and related research areas.