Relevance judgements within the context of work tasks

This paper describes the empirical testing of part of a model of relevance manifestations. The research described here is part of a larger study: this paper specifically looks at the types of relevance judgements (manifestations of relevance) that are made by users executing works tasks in different contexts. The relevance judgements of users engaged in three different types of work task (different contexts) were captured through the use of questionnaires at the end of the work task. The different work tasks were chosen to represent different contexts of information use in order to establish whether the context of the information need and work task has an influence on the way that information sources are evaluated and used. It was found that the context of work task performed has a statistically significant influence on the type of relevance judgement that is made.