Amount of invested mental effort (AIME) in online searching

  • Authors:

  • Soo Young Rieh;Yong-Mi Kim;Karen Markey

  • Affiliations:

  • School of Information, University of Michigan, North Quad, 105 S. State Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285, United States;School of Information, University of Michigan, North Quad, 105 S. State Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285, United States;School of Information, University of Michigan, North Quad, 105 S. State Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285, United States

  • Venue:
  • Information Processing and Management: an International Journal
  • Year:
  • 2012

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Abstract

This research investigates how people's perceptions of information retrieval (IR) systems, their perceptions of search tasks, and their perceptions of self-efficacy influence the amount of invested mental effort (AIME) they put into using two different IR systems: a Web search engine and a library system. It also explores the impact of mental effort on an end user's search experience. To assess AIME in online searching, two experiments were conducted using these methods: Experiment 1 relied on self-reports and Experiment 2 employed the dual-task technique. In both experiments, data were collected through search transaction logs, a pre-search background questionnaire, a post-search questionnaire and an interview. Important findings are these: (1) subjects invested greater mental effort searching a library system than searching the Web; (2) subjects put little effort into Web searching because of their high sense of self-efficacy in their searching ability and their perception of the easiness of the Web; (3) subjects did not recognize that putting mental effort into searching was something needed to improve the search results; and (4) data collected from multiple sources proved to be effective for assessing mental effort in online searching.