Differences in information seeking behaviour between digital natives and their parents

The aim of this study was to determine differences in information-seeking behaviour between digital natives and their parents' generation. The focus was on the formulation, length and time needed to formulate the search queries. For this purpose, twelve test persons were each given three tasks on the search query types according to Broder. The test persons of the parent generation were each in a parent-child relationship with the test persons of the digital native generation. The results of the study show that the search queries of the digital natives were shorter on average and were adapted more frequently. The parent generation formulated slightly longer search queries and adapted them less often. The digital natives were faster than their parents both in thinking about and typing a search query and in finding a search result. There were no significant findings about syntax and word use within families. Across generations, it was found that search queries were most often formulated with keywords and patterns in the search styles of the different types of search queries could be identified. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)