CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF A RESEARCH ARTICLE

Critical analysis of a research article

Critical analysis of a research article

Research paper

C.W. Choo, B. Detlor, and D. Turnbull, “Information Seeking on the Web: An Integrated Model of Browsing and Searching”, First Monday, Volume 5, Number 2 - 7

Introduction

Explosion tools, incessant progress of research techniques, new applications (such as Weblogs, the RSS ...), the semantic Web: the world of information retrieval on the Internet is constantly boil, permanent transformation for 10 years and it is very difficult or impossible to make a stop on images or a comprehensive picture, a clear inventory and ordering tools, technologies and developments that affect them. According to surveys of CREDOC, the penetration of computers in homes with, in its wake, the connection to the Internet, has seen a significant appreciation over the past decade (Spiekermann et al., 2008). In June 2008, more than half of French people aged over 18 had an Internet connection at home. However, as the authors note, “substantial disparities persist as social categories” since “more than eight in ten graduates (82%) access the Internet from home, against a non-graduate in four (27% ) “(op. cit. p. 54). Among young and better educated, Internet begins to take an important source of information, including monitoring of events (p. 161).

If a substantial proportion of the population, the Internet has become a preferred means of accessing information, it is important to consider how people seek - and find - the information that interests them. In the range of tools and services that are available to them, search engines dominate, becoming for many the first step in their research.

There is no doubt that using a search engine has become a habit for many web users. But so far this resort is it always effective? Customers have sufficient command of the tools to achieve their research? What do they do on failure? Do they know enough engines to correctly interpret the results? How this knowledge and know-how are they distributed in the population? What relationship is there between age, education level, Internet usage and behaviour of information retrieval?

These questions, whose first work dates back to the '90s, keep a real sharp with the rapid changes occurring in the sector of engines and Internet searching. Not only the diversity of uses has greatly reduced the benefit of Google, but besides the features of this engine and those of its competitors has substantially changed. While large surveys that identify general trends, more focused work on specific users allow for better reporting practices and behaviours. This is for these reasons the research has been conducted.

Information retrieval on the Internet by users

The development of search engines in the late 90s has led to much work on their features and their uses. A focus for research on the uses made of it, Assadi and Beaudouin (2002) distinguish between the “focus on the engines” usually based on the analysis of traces (logs), and approaches “user centered”, more experimental, based on observation of users in information retrieval ...