Re-examining the potential effectiveness of interactive query expansion

Much attention has been paid to the relative effectiveness of interactive query expansion versus automatic query expansion. Although interactive query expansion has the potential to be an effective means of improving a search, in this paper we show that, on average, human searchers are less likely than systems to make good expansion decisions. To enable good expansion decisions, searchers must have adequate instructions on how to use interactive query expansion functionalities. We show that simple instructions on using interactive query expansion do not necessarily help searchers make good expansion decisions and discuss difficulties found in making query expansion decisions. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.3.3 [Information Search and Retrieval]: - search process, relevance feedback. General Terms Experimentation, Human Factors Keywords Query expansion, Evaluation

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: SIGIR
• Authors: Ian Ruthven
• Keywords: Interactive Query Expansion, Query Expansion, Query Expansion Versus, SIGIR 2003