A study of the use of variables in information retrieval user studies

Abstract

This article reports on an exploratory study of the measurement of commonality in the use of variables or measures by authors and groups of authors who have reported on studies of information retrieval system users. There is some similarity to co-citation analysis in that, when two individual papers, or two authors over several works, use the same variables, this indicates a similarity in approach to the subject. Such usage may be a stronger indication of similarity than co-citation because it represents what the authors did, rather than what they say.