ANALYTICAL SEARCHING VS BROWSING IN HYPERTEXT INFORMATION-RETRIEVAL SYSTEMS

An experiment was conducted to study search behaviour of different user groups in a hypertext information retrieval system. A three-way analysis of variance test was conducted to study the effects of gender, search task and search experience on search option (analytical searching vs. browsing), as measured by the proportion of nodes reached through analytical searching. The search task factor influenced search option in that a general task caused more browsing and a specific task more analytical searching. Gender or search experience alone did not affect the search option. These findings are discussed in light of evaluation of existing systems and implications for future design.