Hypertext navigation - An intrinsic component of the corporate intranet

As organizations continue to transform traditional text into digital documentation for corporate intranets, the need to explore relationships among salient variables that facilitate human processing in these environments is essential. The current study was designed to inspect the relationships among a set of variables that focus on domain knowledge, learners' interest in topics, text comprehension, and the ability to navigate through the hypertext environment. The literature and our experiences facilitated the choice of these variables as critical to assisting user navigation. Sophisticated data analyses were performed to test relationships between the variables identified. Results demonstrated that higher amounts of domain knowledge, as opposed to interest in the computerized medium, lead to increased flexibility in navigating through the medium. Additionally, domain knowledge positively affected the comprehension of the text. Implications for hypertext comprehension and navigation are discussed in this paper.