Professor Ian Ruthven, University of Strathclyde
Professor Ian Ruthven’s AHRC funded project, investigating how people make cognitive decisions about information they encounter on the internet, provided him with the ideal opportunity to engage the public in his research.
The project team needed to understand how people with different skills, abilities and confidence in computers interact with the web. They recruited volunteers through the University’s continuing education evening classes, and by word of mouth – asking those that had volunteered to recommend others.
With each of the 20 volunteers the project team used eye-tracking technology to assess how they use information on a web page or search engine result to make decisions. The eye tracking technology enabled them to track what paths they followed, where they looked on the page to find information and the processes behind the decision making.
What did become apparent during the sessions was that confidence in one domain does not all ways transfer to the web, or even to a different type of activity on the web. Someone with strong financial skills, for example, who was used to analysing complex financial information didn’t always use these skills when booking a holiday online. They didn’t ask the same questions about the information they encountered – the skills were not always transferable.
Search engines have used eye tracking technology in the past but assumed that people made simple decisions when searching the web, in particular if someone didn’t click on the top two or three search results then it had been a search failure. Instead Professor Ruthven’s research showed that people were using more complex decision making behaviour. If they were simply looking for a web site then they would focus on the top two results, but if looking for specific information, they will use information including data, quality tangible evidence, facts, figures, etc. The attractiveness of the information even affected their behaviour, discarding information that was useful but didn’t look interesting.
Professor Ruthven’s findings can help predict search behaviour, for instance how likely someone is to find a page useful. Once you understand this you can then present the information on the page in a way that will enable the searcher to get to the information they want quickly. Professor Ruthven has presented his findings at a number of conferences and has seen interest from search engine companies wanting to understand how people are assessing information.
Working with the public did bring with it its own challenges. Trying to get people to understand what academic research is and why it is being undertaken was one such challenge. Another was trying to break down people’s preconceptions of the web. Many of those that participated in the studies used the web for a particular reason, for instance e-commerce, or communication, which leads them to behave in a certain way.
For those thinking of involving the general public in their research Professor Ruthven suggests that you ‘use people that can challenge your own preconceptions. You need people to challenge you, not work with your interpretations, but can help you understand how others perceive the tools you work with’.
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