Student searching behavior and the web: use of academic resources and Google

Library Trends, Spring, 2005 by Jillian R. Griffiths, Peter Brophy

When participants were asked to locate a Web site to find specific information, 70 percent responded that they were successful, and 30 percent responded that they were unsuccessful. When asked to find information via a specific service, 74 percent responded that they were successful, and 17 percent were unsuccessful (9 percent did not know). Check questions were included to ensure that participants were not overgenerous in their reports of success.

From these results it is clear that, even when users can find information, it is not always an easy task. This may have serious implications for developers of services as a number of studies (Griffiths, 1996; Johnson, Griffiths, & Hartley, 2001) have shown that users will often trade performance for the path of least cognitive resistance (minimum effort and time).

Students were asked to search for as long (or short) a time as they wanted provided that they spent no longer than 30 minutes on any one service. This upper limit was imposed as a result of other research (Craven & Griffiths, 2002), which found that the average time taken to search for information is between 15 and 19 minutes. The majority of students in this study spent an average of between 1 and 15 minutes searching for information. The DEVISE project (Johnson, Griffiths, & Hartley, 2001) also found that Efficiency correlated most strongly with General Satisfaction, with Effectiveness second, which may suggest that the amount of time and effort required from the user matters more than the relevance of the items found.

Students were also asked why they stopped trying to locate information, with the following reasons given:

* Found information = 70 percent

* Unable to find Web site within time allowed = 15 percent

* Could not find a Web site and gave up = 12 percent

* Technical problems affected search = 3 percent

Participants who were unable to find a Web site within the time allowed usually stated that they had run out of time. Among those who "Couldn't find a Web site and gave up," frustration at being unable to complete the task was expressed. "It is frustrating when you can't find what you are looking for" or "frustration; all sites were irrelevant" were typical remarks. The lack of success was described as "hitting a brick wall" or not "getting anywhere." Some admitted that they simply did not have any further search strategies, saying they "Don't know where else to search for it," "I have searched everywhere I can think of," or "didn't know where else to go."

This frustration was also reflected in some of the comments of those who encountered "Technical problems." These problems were usually expressed as "slowness." "Internet was very slow" was the most usual comment. "Taking ages to get to some sites," "Server could not contact host and very slow for pages to show," or "Pages would not open" were other complaints. One respondent remarked that he/she "decided to stop, as if I was doing a search for myself I would not have spent that much time." It may be frustrating for the developers of resources to accept that speed of access may be a criterion on which users will evaluate a service, but studies have shown that this is an important indicator for some users (Johnson, Griffiths, & Hartley, 2001). One respondent gave a very simple reason for stopping--"Teatime!"