Why is it difficult to find comprehensive information? Implications of information scatter for search and design: Research Articles

  • Authors:

  • Suresh K. Bhavnani

  • Affiliations:

  • School of Information, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109

  • Venue:
  • Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

The rapid development of Web sites providing extensive coverage ofa topic, coupled with the development of powerful search engines(designed to help users find such Web sites), suggests that userscan easily find comprehensive information about a topic. In domainssuch as consumer healthcare, finding comprehensive informationabout a topic is critical as it can improve a patient'sjudgment in making healthcare decisions, and can encourage highercompliance with treatment. However, recent studies show thatdespite using powerful search engines, many healthcare informationseekers have difficulty finding comprehensive information even fornarrow healthcare topics because the relevant information isscattered across many Web sites. To date, no studies have analyzedhow facts related to a search topic are distributed across relevantWeb pages and Web sites. In this study, the distribution of factsrelated to five common healthcare topics across high-quality sitesis analyzed, and the reasons underlying those distributions areexplored. The analysis revealed the existence of few pages that hadmany facts, many pages that had few facts, and no single page orsite that provided all the facts. While such a distributionconforms to other information-related phenomena, a deeper analysisrevealed that the distributions were caused by a trade-off betweendepth and breadth, leading to the existence of general,specialized, and sparse pages. Furthermore, the results helped tomake explicit the knowledge needed by searchers to findcomprehensive healthcare information, and suggested the motivationto exploredistribution-consciousapproaches for the development of future search systems, searchinterfaces, Web page designs, and training. © 2005 WileyPeriodicals, Inc.