Rutgers’ TREC 2001 Interactive Track Experience

Abstract

Our focus this year was to investigate methods for increasing query length in interactive information searching in the Web context, and to see if these methods led to changes in task performance and/or interaction. Thirty-four subjects each searched on four of the Interactive Track topics, in one of two conditions: a box query input mode; and a line query input mode. One-half of the subjects were instructed to enter their queries as complete sentences or questions; the other half as lists of words or phrases. Results are that: queries entered as questions or statements were significantly longer than those entered as words or phrases (twice as long); that there was no difference in query length between the box and line modes (except for medical topics, where keyword mode led to significantly more unique terms per search); and, that longer queries led to better performance. Other results of note are that satisfaction with the search was negatively correlated with length of time searching and other measures of interaction effort, and that the buying topics were significantly more difficult than the other three types.