Effects Of Hypertext Structure And Time Stress On Search Performance In WWW

Hypertext is a method of nonlinear on-line information management that can reduce difficulties of navigation in large amount information systems. Hypertext is being used more and more often in WWW. Researches showed that a good text structure could reduce some problems, such as disorientation. In this research, three experiments had been designed to study the effects of text structure, prior knowledge and time stress in well-structured text and poor-structured text. The first experiment was designed to explore the effects of text structures and prior knowledge, using pool-structured text. The second experiment was designed to explore the effects of text structures on performance in well-structured text. The third experiment was based on the second experiment, the network structure and the optimal structure in hierarchical and mixed structures of experiment 2 were adopted respectively in order to explored the effects of time stress during information searching.We had four conclusions: (1) Knowledgeable subjects performed better than nonknowledgeable subjects (including searching time and lostness) . (2) With the increase of the number of the nodes, the mean searching time of linear text was significantly longer than that of nonlinear texts. The mean searching time of linear text was longer than nonlinear structures, but it had fewer disorientation phenomena. (3) Whatever the structural level of the two texts would be(high or low), when the depth of hierarchical structure increased, the mean time and lostness increased. (4) Hypertext structures and time stress had significant effects on searching performance, and the two factors interacted. For the control group, hypertext structures had no significant effects, but for the time stress group, the difference between each structure was significant.So in hypertext design, the influence of text structures and time stress must be considered.