Users' Experience of Information Retrieval Systems: An Exploration of the Relationship between Search Experience and Affective Measures

This article reports on the factor analysis of affective data gathered from a study of searching behavior in two library catalogs. Twenty subjects were assigned information problems to solve through searching a university card catalog and 20 were assigned the same problems to solve in a comparable online catalog. After searches were completed, subjects were asked to evaluate their search results and to respond to attitude measures about the search experience. The 11 attitude items were constructed to tap a variety of affective aspects of searching. The results of using a factor analysis procedure on the responses to the attitude measures are presented. Factor patterns in the data can serve to identify the dimensions on which search experiences are evaluated by users, to direct further investigation into user evaluations, and to suggest features for inclusion in information retrieval systems accessed directly by users