Studies On The Relevance Model Of Collaborative Information Seeking And Retrieval Under The Context

It has been widely recognized that relevance is one of the basic problem and a core concept in the field of library and information science. Domestic and foreign researches and studies have made abundant achievements theoretically and practically. In recent years, as collaborative information seeking and retrieval becoming a hot research topic in the library and information science, its research scopes and contents have been a rapid development. However, relevance, which is the core concept in collaborative information seeking and retrieval, has only a few studied. In view of these, this study adopts a naturalistic approach to explore the influence factors of relevance judgment of group users in collaborative information seeking and retrieval and to construct a relevance model for it.In this paper, the main contents and results are listed as follows:(1)Identifying the influence factors set of relevance judgment in collaborative information and retrieval. This study had selected four group users as research object, which have real life information needs and the relevance judgment process data in collaborative information seeking and retrieval are collected through observation, thinking aloud, interviews and other methods. This study finally summarized five main influence factor categories about relevance judgment in collaborative information seeking and retrieval based on Grounded Theory by three coding levels, including context, the implementer of seeking, information needs, information exchanging, division of labor and roles.(2)Preparing the scale of relevance judgment influence factors of collaborative information seeking and retrieval. Combining with the above specific coding and related research results in the literatures, this study have developed a scale of relevance judgment influence factors and criteria in collaborative information seeking and retrieval. In addition to, this study had utilized the preliminary survey data to filter items through item analysis, and to develop a formal scale by factor analysis and reliability analysis.(3) Constructing relevance judgment influence factors model of collaborative information seeking and retrieval. This study had constructed a relevance judgment initial model of collaborative information seeking and retrieval based on the results of coding and related studies. A questionnaire is distributed and 501 valid case data were collected. SEM method were utilized to prove the initial model.(4) Constructing relevance model of collaborative information seeking and retrieval. A relevance model of collaborative information seeking and retrieval is constructed based Mizarro Model and Group judgment model. This study explains relevance is consensus between individuals and group, which are matching relationship between group’s information needs and information resources under the context of the information exchange and user psychology.