AN INVESTIGATION INTO SELF-QUESTIONING BEHAVIOR DURING PROBLEM-SOLVING

摘要

The purpose of this research was to investigate self-questioning behavior within the context of a problem-solving situation in order to better understand the user's handling of his/her information need. An experiment was designed to yield data to test the hypothesis that problem-solving activity is reflected as successful and unsuccessful questioning behavior. Two different behaviors in questioning emerged to support the hypothesis.rnThe basic underlying assumptions for this study are that question generation arises from an information need and that questioning is a behavioral act to satisfy that need.rnThe specific hypothesis is: Self-questioning behavior in a problem situation reveals successful and unsuccessful problem-solving strategies.rnCorollary is: Solvers and non-solvers exhibit differing self-questioning strategies.rnThis investigation found information need to be different for solvers and non-solvers and that this difference was revealed through self-questioning strategies.rnThe findings clearly delineated between solvers and non-solvers. Conventional statistical treatment of the scores on the number of questions generated supported the assumption of equal means: a surface or first level effect as it turned out to be. The correlation treatment, however, was able to demonstrate two different behaviors specifically lexical from the syntax: a second level effect. These specific question formulations when treated semantically through content analysis revealed underlying differences in the questioning strategies: a third level effect.