Research: Toward a Better Understanding of Help Seeking Behavior: An Evaluation of Help Mechanisms in Two IR systems
by Hong (Iris) Xie and Colleen Cool
Source: Proceedings 69th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIST) 43, (via E-LIS)

Abstract:

Help-seeking can be viewed as a multi-dimensional information behavior which often overlaps with both information seeking and searching. Within IR, though, there has been little research devoted to understanding how people learn to use help functionalities effectively. Research reported in this paper addresses this gap. After searching in two IR systems, fifty participants completed a self-administered questionnaire which described the ways they learned to use the help mechanisms; difficulties associated with this learning process; their general evaluation of the help mechanisms, with specification of features that they liked and disliked; specific aspects of the help mechanism that assisted participants in the search process; and their evaluation of the interaction between thesearcher and the help mechanisms. The results show that people prefer specific help, visual help, and help with demos instead of general help, text help, and help with description. The theoretical and practical implications of this study are further discussed.

Source: E-LIS

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