Tagging Personal Information: A Contrast between Attitudes and Behavior

摘要

In a previous work we tested users' preferences withsystems that allow to store and retrieve information eitherusing tags or folders. In the current study we askedparticipants sampled from the same population about theirattitudes towards tags by using a questionnaire (N = 168).We then compared the results regarding attitudes gatheredin this study with the ones testing actual behavior gatheredin our previous one. Overall, results showed positiveattitudes towards tagging and multiple classification. Thesefinding are in sharp contrast with our previous behavioralstudy which showed clear preference for folders and singleclassification: Our participants tended to agree withstatements such as “most people use folders only due tohabits”, “if users were taught to use tags they would preferthem over folders", and “In 20 years children born todaywill use mostly” however in our previous study in whichwe taught our participants to use tags there was a clearbehavioral preference for folders over tags. Mostparticipants in the present study thought that giving severalclassifications to personal information is a good idea, whileour previous results showed that even when tags were used,multiple classification was exceptional. Furthermore, ourcurrent participants tended to agree that “the use of tags ismore efficient than folder use” while in our previous studyretrieval was faster without tags. We conclude this paperwith suggestions regarding future research.