Young Children's Search Strategies and Construction of Search Queries

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Date
2000-10-09Author
Revelle, Glenda
Druin, Allison
Platner, Michele
Weng, Stacy
Bederson, Benjamin B.
Hourcade, Juan Pablo
Sherman, Lisa
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
This paper describes a quantitative study focused on two
questions: (1) Can children understand and use a hierarchical domain
structure to find particular instances of animals? (2) Can children
construct search queries to conduct complex searches if sufficiently
supported, both visually and conceptually? These two questions have been
explored in the context of developing a digital library interface (called
"QueryKids") for children ages 5-10 years old that visualizes the
querying
process and its results. The results of this study showed that children
were able to search very efficiently, primarily using a "fewest-steps"
strategy, with the QueryKids software prototype. In addition, children
were
able to construct search queries with a high degree of accuracy. Results
are discussed in terms of the scaffolding support that QueryKids
provides,
and its effectiveness in helping children to search efficiently and
construct complex search queries.
Keywords: Children, information retrieval, digital libraries, empirical
evaluation, education applications
(Also cross-referenced as HCIL 2000-19)
(Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-2000-68)