In interactive information retrieval, researchers consider the user behaviour towards systems and search tasks in order to adapt search results and to improve the search experience of users. Analysing the users’ past interactions with the system is one typical approach. In this paper, we analyse the user behaviour in retrieval sessions towards Marcia Bates’ search stratagems such as “Footnote Chasing”, “Citation Searching”, “Keyword Searching”, “Author Searching” and “Journal Run” in a real-life academic search engine. In fact, search stratagems represent high-level search behaviour as the users go beyond simple execution of queries and investigate more of the system functionalities. We performed analyses of these five search stratagems using two datasets extracted from the social sciences search engine sowiport. A specific focus was the detection of the search phase and frequency of the usage of these stratagems. In addition, we explored the impact of these stratagems on the whole search process performance. We addressed mainly the usage patterns’ observation of the stratagems, their impact on the conduct of retrieval sessions and explored whether they are used similarly in both datasets. From the observation and metrics proposed, we can conclude that the utilisation of search stratagems in real retrieval sessions leads to an improvement of the precision in terms of positive interactions. For both datasets (SUSS 14–15 and SUSS 16–17), the user behaviour was similar as all stratagems appear most frequently in the middle of a session. However, the difference is that “Footnote Chasing”, “Citation Searching” and “Journal Run” appear mostly at the end of a session while Keyword and Author Searching appear typically at the beginning. Thus, we can conclude from the log analysis that the improvement of search functionalities including personalisation and or recommendation could be achieved by considering references, citations, and journals in the ranking process.
Both user involvement and system support play important roles in applying search tactics. To apply search tactics in the information retrieval (IR) processes, users make decisions and take actions in the search process, while IR systems assist them by providing different system features. After analyzing 61 participants’ information searching diaries and questionnaires we identified various types of user involvement and system support in applying different types of search tactics. Based on quantitative analysis, search tactics were classified into 3 groups: user-dominated, system-dominated, and balanced tactics. We further explored types of user involvement and types of system support in applying search tactics from the 3 groups. The findings show that users and systems play major roles in applying user-dominated and system-dominated tactics, respectively. When applying balanced tactics, users and systems must collaborate closely with each other. In this article, we propose a model that illustrates user involvement and system support as they occur in user-dominated tactics, system-dominated tactics, and balanced tactics. Most important, IR system design implications are discussed to facilitate effective and efficient applications of the 3 groups of search tactics. In this paper, we present the results of a user study on exploratory search activities in a social science digital library. We conducted a user study with 32 participants with a social sciences background—16 postdoctoral researchers and 16 students—who were asked to solve a task on searching related work to a given topic. The exploratory search task was performed in a 10-min time slot. The use of certain search activities is measured and compared to gaze data recorded with an eye tracking device. We use a novel tree graph representation to visualise the users’ search patterns and introduce a way to combine multiple search session trees. The tree graph representation is capable of creating one single tree for multiple users and identifying common search patterns. In addition, the information behaviour of students and postdoctoral researchers is being compared. The results show that search activities on the stratagem level are frequently utilised by both user groups. The most heavily used search activities were keyword search, followed by browsing through references and citations, and author searching. The eye tracking results showed an intense examination of documents metadata, especially on the level of citations and references. When comparing the group of students and postdoctoral researchers, we found significant differences regarding gaze data on the area of the journal name of the seed document. In general, we found a tendency of the postdoctoral researchers to examine the metadata records more intensively with regard to dwell time and the number of fixations. By creating combined session trees and deriving subtrees from those, we were able to identify common patterns like economic (explorative) and exhaustive (navigational) behaviour. Our results show that participants utilised multiple search strategies starting from the seed document, which means that they examined different paths to find related publications. Measures of user behaviour and user perception have been used to evaluate interactive information retrieval systems. However, there have been few efforts taken to understand the relationship between these two. In this paper, we investigated both using user actions from log files, and the results of the User Engagement Scale, both of which came from a study of people interacting with a novel interface to an image collection, but with a non-purposeful task. Our results suggest that selected behavioural actions are associated with selected user perceptions (i.e., focused attention, felt involvement, and novelty), while typical search and browse actions have no association with aesthetics and perceived usability. This is a novel finding that can lead toward a more systematic user-centered evaluation. Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to report a study of how the test instrument of a simulated work task situation is used in empirical evaluations of interactive information retrieval (IIR) and reported in the research literature. In particular, the author is interested to learn whether the requirements of how to employ simulated work task situations are followed, and whether these requirements call for further highlighting and refinement. Design methodology approach – In order to study how simulated work task situations are used, the research literature in question is identified. This is done partly via citation analysis by use of Web of Science®, and partly by systematic search of online repositories. On this basis, 67 individual publications were identified and they constitute the sample of analysis. Findings – The analysis reveals a need for clarifications of how to use simulated work task situations in IIR evaluations. In particular, with respect to the design and creation of realistic simulated... This presentation addresses methodological issues of interactive information retrieval (IIR) evaluation in terms of what it entails to study users' use and interaction with IR systems, as well as their satisfaction with retrieved information. In particular, the presentation focuses on test design, and it takes a look into the toolbox of IIR test design with reference to data collection methods and test procedure. It calls for careful and well-planned studies to qualify the knowledgebase generated as a result of the conducted IIR studies. The presentation further reflects on the need for an updated theoretical framework to describe partly the various types of IIR, and partly how IIR nowadays often is carried out in a seamless task switching IT environment on various platforms, including via apps. This type of environment furthermore calls for new methodologies to study the IIR behaviour in the habitat of the users to ensure a complete and realistic picture to enhance our understanding of IIR. The presentation also reflects on whether a re-thinking of the concept on an information need is necessary. One may ask whether it still makes sense to talk about types of information needs. Or should we rather study IIR from the perspective of search dedication and task load in order to also include everyday life information seeking? With this presentation, the IIR community is invited to an exchange of ideas and is encouraged to engage in collaborations with the solving of these (and other) issues to our joint advantage.