Why do some people have more difficulty learning to use an information retrieval system than others?

  • Authors:

  • C. Borgman

  • Affiliations:

  • Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of California, Los Angeles

  • Venue:
  • SIGIR '87 Proceedings of the 10th annual international ACM SIGIR conference on Research and development in information retrieval
  • Year:
  • 1987

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Abstract

The population using information retrieval systems is becoming increasingly diverse. We find a wide range of skills in ability to use these systems; this diverse population must be accommodated by the next generation of systems. This paper reports on a study to identify variables related to information retrieval aptitude, based on results from earlier studies of searchers and programmers. A sample of undergraduate subjects from English, psychology, and engineering majors was given a series of psychometric tests and compared to known populations. We find that engineering majors exhibit academic background and personality characteristics most like those of skilled searchers and programmers, with contrasting patterns or no discernible patterns in English and psychology majors. The strength of most associations increases when restricted to subjects who have either stayed in one major or who have changed major only within one disciplinary area. About half the variance in choice of major can be explained by scores on the tests administered, and a comparable amount of variance in test scores can be explained by the academic background variables.