Observations of Searchers: OHSU TREC 2001 Interactive Track

The goal of the TREC 2001 Interactive Track was to carry out observational experiments of Web-based searching to develop hypotheses for experiments in subsequent years. Each participating group was asked to undertake exploratory experiments based on a general protocol. For the OHSU Interactive Track experiments this year, we chose to perform a pure observational study of watching searchers carry out tasks on the Web. We found users were able to complete almost all the tasks within the time limits of the protocol. Future experimental studies aiming to discern differences among systems may need to provide more challenging tasks to detect such differences. Background At the SIGIR 2000 workshop, Interactive Retrieval at TREC and Beyond, the Interactive Track decided on a number of new directions for TREC 2001 and beyond [1]. One of these decisions was to move the track to a two-year cycle, which would provide time to refine the track protocol and collect adequate amounts of data. In addit...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2001
• Where: TREC
• Authors: William R. Hersh, Lynetta Sacherek, Daniel Olson
• Keywords: Interactive Track, Observational, TREC 2001, TREC 2001 Track, TREC 2008