Collaborative Information Seeking Behavior Research

Objective:The research carried out a collaborative information seeking experiment to analyze characteristics of users’ collaborative information seeking behaviors,to explore how the collaboration ability and information task types may influence collaborative information seeking behaviors, and finally to construct the collaborative information seeking behavior pattern.The study can enrich findings in the research field of collaborative information seeking behavior and provide some references for the construction and improvement of collaborative search systems.Methods:Coagmento was chosen as the experimental platform.20 groups of subjects were selected based on the score of College Students’ Cooperation Ability Scale,and 10 groups with higher scores were groups with stronger collaboration ability.The study designed a factual task,an interpretive task and an exploratory task based on Kim J’s information task types,all of which are health related tasks.The study analyzed behavior data,including queries, browsing behaviors,sharing behaviors, communication behaviors and behavioral stages with the comprehensive application of questionnaire survey, log analysis, statistical analysis and co-word analysis.Besides, the collaborative information seeking behavior pattern was constructed with Matlab. Results:The results indicate that the collaboration ability and information task type do have an influence on collaborative information seeking behaviors. Specifically, users’ collaboration ability influence sharing behaviors and communication behaviors.The stronger the collaboration ability is,more information sharing and communication behaviors in the whole search process.Information task types do have an impact on search queries,browsing web pages,sharing behaviors and communication behaviors.In a more complex and exploratory information task,users tend to submit more queries,browse more deep web pages,share information and communicate more actively,and the search is dynamic and extended. According to the evaluation results,groups of stronger collaboration ability obtain larger web page coverage rate,larger relevant web page coverage rate,higher accuracy,and lower repeated browsing rate.Users get lower web page coverage rate,lower relevant web page coverage rate,lower accuracy,and lower repeated browsing rate in information tasks with greater complexity and exploration.Based on search behavior, browsing behavior and collaboration behavior, a three-dimensional collaborative information seeking behavior pattern is constructed. Among the 8 groups lying in the octants from 1 to 4,7 are groups with stronger collaboration ability. Conclusion:The collaboration ability influences users’ searching behaviors and browsing behaviors.Information task type influences users’ searching behaviors,browsing behaviors,sharing behaviors and communication behaviors.The collaborative information seeking behavior pattern can divide collaborative information seeking behaviors into 8 types.