Are expert users always better searchers? Interaction of expertise and semantic grouping in hypertext search tasks

L. Salmerón, J.J. Cañas and I. Fajardo

Behaviour and Information Technology, 2005, vol. 24, issue 6, 471-475

Abstract: The facilitative effect of expertise in hypertext information retrieval (IR) tasks has been widely reported in related literature. However, recent theories of human expertise question the robustness of this result, since previous works have not fully considered the interaction between user and system characteristics. In this study, the constraint attunement hypothesis (CAH) is considered in order to predict that the effect of expertise in IR would appear only when the user and system characteristics can be combined successfully. Results from an experiment revealed that expert users outperformed novice users in IR when the elements of a system interface are organized semantically, but not when organized randomly. Results are discussed in the framework of the CAH supporting the interactive nature of human behaviour in HCI.

Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/0144329042000320018 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:tbitxx:v:24:y:2005:i:6:p:471-475

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/tbit20

DOI: 10.1080/0144329042000320018

Access Statistics for this article

Behaviour and Information Technology is currently edited by Dr Panos P Markopoulos

More articles in Behaviour and Information Technology from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().