Experiments on the Cognitive Aspects of Information Seeking and Information Retrieving

摘要

The aim of the study was to contribute to the formal, scientific characterization of the elements involved in information seeking and retrieving, particularly in relation to the cognitive decisions and human interactions involved. The objectives were to conduct experiments and observations under as real-life conditions as possible related to: user context of questions in information retrieval; the structure and classification of questions; cognitive traits and decision making of searchers; different searches of the same question. The study involved 40 users with 1 question each, 39 searchers, 360 searches and 5411 unique documents evaluated by users. The final report contains detailed descriptions of models, methods, procedures and results obtained. An appendix contains the raw data, questions, and forms used.