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Dissertation Information for Mark A. Rosso

NAME:
- Mark A. Rosso

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- Library and Information Science

SCHOOL:
- University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (USA) (2005)

ADVISORS:
- Stephanie Haas

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- Paul Solomon
- Jerry Dale Saye
- Jane Greenberg
- Elaine G. Toms

MPACT Status: Fully Complete

Title: Using genre to improve Web search

Abstract: The dissertation explores the use of genre as a document descriptor in order to improve the effectiveness of web searching. A major issue to be resolved is the identification of what document categories should be used as genres. As genre is a "folk typology", document categories must enjoy widespread recognition by their intended user groups, in order to qualify as genres. Three user studies were conducted to develop a genre palette and show that it is recognizable to users. A final study aimed to determine the palette's usefulness, in simulated web search scenarios.

The first study was a survey of user terminology for web pages. Three participants separated 100 webpage printouts into stacks according to genre, assigning names and definitions to each genre. The second study aimed to refine the resulting set of forty-eight (often conceptually and lexically similar) genre names and definitions into a smaller palette of user-preferred terminology. Ten participants classified the same 100 webpages. A set of five principles for creating a genre palette from individuals' sortings was developed, and the list of 48 was trimmed to 18 genres. The third study aimed to show that users would agree on the genres of webpages, when choosing from the genre palette. In an online experiment in which 257 participants categorized a new set of 55 pages using the 18 genres, on average, over 70% agreed on the genre of each page.

The final study investigated the potential usefulness of the genre palette for web search result evaluation. Thirty-two participants performed 4 tasks. In each task, participants judged the usefulness of 20 search results & 20 webpages according to an assigned task scenario. Participants' time in judging the search results, and the stability of their judgments (as compared to their judgments of the actual pages) were compared for search results, with and without the genre of page described in each search result. The genre-annotated search results produced no significant improvement in participants' ability to make more consistent or faster relevance judgments.

Difficulties of experimental design and future directions for the work are discussed.

MPACT Scores for Mark A. Rosso

A = 0
C = 0
A+C = 0
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-01-31 06:31:00

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