Representing search tasks in an information use environment: a case of English primary schools

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/JD-02-2019-0024
Published date26 September 2019
Date26 September 2019
Pages1370-1395
AuthorSophie Rutter,Elaine G. Toms,Paul David Clough
Representing search tasks in an
information use environment: a
case of English primary schools
Sophie Rutter
Information School, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
Elaine G. Toms
Management School, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK, and
Paul David Clough
The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK and
Peak Indicators, Chesterfield, UK
Abstract
Purpose To design effective task-responsive search systems, sufficient understanding of userstasks must
be gained and their characteristics described. Although existing multi-dimensional task schemes canbe used
to describe userssearch and work tasks, they do not take into account the information use environment (IUE)
that contextualises the task. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach With a focus on English primary schools, in four stages a
multi-dimensional task scheme was developed that distinguishes between task characteristics generic to all
environments, and those that are specific to schools. In Stage 1, a provisional scheme was developed based
upon the existing literature. In the next two stages, through interviews with teachers and observations of
school children, the provisional scheme was populated and revised. In Stage 4, whether search tasks with the
same information use can be distinguished by their characteristics was examined.
Findings Ten genericcharacteristics were identified(nature of work task, searchtask originator, search task
flexibility, searchtask doer, search task necessity, task output,search goal, stage in work task, resources and
information use) and four characteristics specific to primary schools (curricular area, use in curricular area,
planning and location). For the differentinformation uses, some characteristics are more typicalthan others.
Practical implications The resulting scheme, based on childrens real-life information seeking, should be
used in the design and evaluation of search systems and digital libraries that support school children. More
generally, the scheme can also be used in other environments.
Originality/value This is the first study to develop a multi-dimensional task scheme that considers
encompasses the IUE.
Keywords Information retrieval, Children (age groups), Classification schemes, Information searches,
Schools, Information research, Educational institutions, Task analysis
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Historically, search systems have been designed to respond to the topic of a search query;
however, people often issue queries to accomplish specific tasks, i.e. a particular item of
workin which they are engaged (Byström and Hansen, 2005, p. 1051). At present,
developing systems that respond effectively to the broader task (rather than just to queries)
remains an unresolved problem (He and Yilmaz, 2017). In part, this is because developing
effective task-responsive systems requires the comprehensive capture and understanding
of userstasks. However, despite significant work completed to date (Kim and Soergel, 2006;
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 75 No. 6, 2019
pp. 1370-1395
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-02-2019-0024
Received 7 February 2019
Revised 26 April 2019
Accepted 27 April 2019
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0022-0418.htm
The authors would like to thank, first, the schools, teachers and children who kindly gave their time to
participate in this study, and for so generously sharing their information-seeking experiences; and
second Nigel Ford who provided much insightful feedback and encouragement during the study. This
research was conducted as part of a PhD, funded by a University of Sheffield Faculty Scholarship.
1370
JD
75,6
Li and Belkin, 2008; Xie, 2009), we still do not have a prescriptive characterisation of tasks
that could be used in developing requirements for task-based search systems.
In this research study, we put tasks under the microscope, restricting our analysis to
tasks performed by school children in an educational setting. Our premise is in keeping with
Taylor (1991, p. 233) who argued that different groups of people, such as engineers and
doctors, operate in different information use environments (IUEs) such that users within the
IUE have different information needs and uses, varying types of problems, and significant
differences between what each regards as information and accepts as problem resolution.
In related work, it was found that five aspects of the school environment (the national
curriculum, best practice, different skills of children and teachers, keeping children safe, and
limited time and resource) influenced how and why children search for information, and that
within this environment there were 12 uses of information (Rutter, 2019b). In this paper,
using the same data set, we examine how the IUE influences the characteristics of a task: a
distinctive mark, trait, or feature that may serve for identification(OED, 2019).
Current search task representation schemes are either generic and do not consider the
particular environment within which the search takes place and the influence this has on a task
(Kim and Soergel, 2006; Li and Belkin, 2008), or they consider the influence of the environment on
the same characteristic (Xie, 2009). The overall objective for this study was to develop an
approach for representing search tasks that originate within a particular IUE primary schools.
Search for school work may be conducted in another location (e.g. home or library), but
importantly the IUE is where the information is used and where the value is given to information
(Taylor, 1991). To meet the objective of this study, we addressed two research questions:
RQ1. What are the characteristics of primary school search tasks?
RQ2. Can search tasks with the same information use be distinguished by their
characteristics?
The research resulted in a novel representation scheme to describe the different
characteristics of search tasks that may be generic to all environments and also those that
are specific to one particular IUE: English primary schools (equivalent to elementary school
in US with children age 411). Then based on the analysis of 114 tasks identified from this
study, typical characteristics of the tasks for different information uses were identified. In
the next section, we examine the prior literature and identify some of the controversies
regarding tasks, and motivations for our research questions. We then describe our
four-stage research design, describing first the methods used followed by the findings of
our study. Finally, we discuss the resulting scheme and its potential for use.
Previous work
Conceptualisation of task and search task
Search is rarely carried out for its own sake and is a dynamic process that is part of a larger
process of decision making and problem solving (Rouse and Rouse, 1984). Work tasks, the
separable parts of a persons duties to her/his employer(Byström and Hansen, 2005,
p. 1053), are considered an important motivator of search. Tasks are hierarchical and within
a work task, there can be many information tasks, one of which might be a search task,
where information is looked for in response to an information need to fulfil, or partially fulfil,
a work task. In schools, a unit of work is a coherent body of teaching/learning material
usually focused on one specific topic or subject(Dictionary of Education, 2016) and can be
considered as conceptually similar to work tasks. For example, a unit, such as learning
about rainforest creatures, can be considered a work task and a search task could be to find
out what anacondas eat. A search task could be completed by submitting one or more
queries to a search engine.
1371
Representing
search tasks
in an IUE

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