Questions in reference interviews
| Pages | 443-465 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/EUM0000000007177 |
| Date | 01 October 1998 |
| Published date | 01 October 1998 |
| Author | Marilyn Domas White |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Journal of Documentation, Vol. 54, No. 4, September 1998
© Aslib, The Association for Information Management.
All rights reserved. Except as otherwise permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without the prior
written permission of the publisher.
Aslib, The Association for Information Management
Staple Hall, Stone House Court, London EC3A 7PB
Tel: +44 (0) 171 903 0000, Fax: +44 (0) 171 903 0011
Email: pubs@aslib.co.uk, WWW: http://www.aslib.co.uk/aslib
QUESTIONS IN REFERENCE INTERVIEWS
MARILYN DOMAS WHITE
whitemd@wam.umd.edu
College of Library and Information Services, University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742
This article characterises the questioning behaviour in reference
interviews preceding delegated online searches of bibliographic data-
bases and relates it to questioning behaviour in other types of
interviews/settings. With one exception, the unit of analysis is the
question (N=610), not the interview. The author uses A.C.
Graesser’s typology of questions to analyse type of question and
M.D. White’s typology of information categories to determine the
question’s content objective; this is the first application of Graesser’s
typology to interview questions in any setting. Graesser’s categories
allow for a more subtle understanding of the kind of information
need underlying a question. Comparisons are made between ques-
tions asked by the information specialist and those asked by the
client. Findings show that the information specialist dominates the
interview, about half the questions were verification questions and
about 22% were judgemental questions or requests; all but four
types of questions from Graesser’s categories appeared in the inter-
views, but no new question types were discovered. Clients often
phrase questions as requests. In content, both clients and informa-
tion specialists focus on the subject and service requested, but the
clients ask also about search strategy and output features. Both par-
ties ask predominantly short-answer questions. Results are related
to interface design for retrieval systems.
INTRODUCTION
Questions have been studied in library and information science (LIS) and other
disciplines [1–3] because they provide insight into the mental activities of partici-
pants engaged in problem solving or decision making. They can indicate, for
example, approaches to a problem or dissonances between existing mental models
and new facts or ideas. Graesser, Person and Huber [4] have identified four major
sets of cognitive mechanisms that cause individuals to generate questions: correct-
ing knowledge deficits; monitoring common ground; socially co-ordinating action;
and controlling conversation and attention, and have pointed out the implications
of these for the design of information systems, especially question-answering sys-
tems. LIS studies tend to perceive questions as manifestations of information
needs, a perception more closely related to the first two mechanisms.
In LIS, most of the question-related research has been done in terms of the
characteristics of questions posed by users [5–18], since the emphasis is on
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Journal of Documentation, vol. 54, no. 4, September 1998, pp. 443–465
facilitating the interaction between humans and information systems or on devis-
ing systems that can actually answer questions. To these ends researchers have
emphasised characterising the client’s information need [5, 7–10, 11, 13, 19–21],
exploring relationships between situations creating information needs and the
nature of the questions [17–19], and understanding the relationship between ques-
tion characteristics and retrieval [12, 14–16]. The methods of characterising the
questions vary across the studies, although Stavri [17] and Keyes [12] use a vari-
ant of the Graesser typology of questions [1], or its predecessor by Lehnert [22],
used in this study.
Only Lynch [23, 24] and Ingwersen and Kaae [25] have considered questions
librarians asked during the reference interview in some detail. Carmon [26] and
Hitchingham [27] both considered question-related variables briefly. Articles dis-
cussing appropriate tactics for reference interviews that are not based on empiri-
cal research have often mentioned questioning tactics [see, for example, 28, 29].
This comparative neglect of the information specialist’s questioning behaviour
during the reference interview is surprising since the reference interview has
evolved over the years as a means of mediating more effectively between infor-
mation seekers and the systems that serve them. Analysing questions posed in this
environment should provide insights into the gaps that occur in the matching
process. Lynch and Ingwersen and Kaae’s findings are discussed later with stud-
ies of questioning in interviews other than reference interviews. Ingwersen [30]
includes an excellent review of user-intermediary-system interaction, covering
both the reference interview and the retrieval interaction.
Purpose and research questions
The primary purpose of this research is to characterise the questioning behaviour
that occurs within reference interviews preceding delegated online searches of
bibliographic databases. The specific research questions that are considered are:
1. which participant, i.e. the information specialist or the client, dom-
inates the interchange?
2. what types of questions are asked during the interview?
3. what content areas stimulate the most questions?
4. are there variations in the types of questions asked by questioner, by
content area?
A secondary purpose is to test the general applicability of Graesser’s typology of
questions [1], which has been developed on the basis of research in other settings,
to interviews, specifically the reference interview.
Literature review
Although neither Graesser’s [1] nor Lehnert’s [22] typology of questions has been
used in studies of interviews, researchers have analysed the nature of questioning
in several different kinds of interviews, e.g. reference, journalism, medical and
personnel interviews. The comments and studies reported here are not compre-
hensive but serve to indicate both the variety and similarity of approaches across
JOURNAL OF DOCUMENTATION vol. 54, no. 4
444
Journal of Documentation, Vol. 54, No. 4, September 1998
© Aslib, The Association for Information Management.
All rights reserved. Except as otherwise permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without the prior
written permission of the publisher.
Aslib, The Association for Information Management
Staple Hall, Stone House Court, London EC3A 7PB
Tel: +44 (0) 171 903 0000, Fax: +44 (0) 171 903 0011
Email: pubs@aslib.co.uk, WWW: http://www.aslib.co.uk/aslib
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