Using local precision to compare search engines in consumer health information retrieval

We have conducted a user study to evaluate several generalist and health-specific search engines on health information retrieval. Users evaluated the relevance of the top 30 documents of 4 search engines in two different health information needs. We introduce the concepts of local and global precision and analyze how they affect the evaluation. Results show that Google surpasses the precision of all other engines, including the health-specific ones, and that precision differs with the type of clinical question and its medical specialty. Categories and Subject Descriptors: H.3.3 [Information Storage and Retrieval]: Information Search and Retrieval; J.3 [Computer Applications]: Life and Medical Sciences General Terms: Experimentation, Performance, Human Factors.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: SIGIR
• Authors: Carla Teixeira Lopes, Cristina Ribeiro
• Keywords: Health Information, Health-specific Search Engines, Information Technology, Search Engines, SIGIR 2010