Examining the effects of task topic familiarity on searchers' behaviors in different task types

In this paper, we examined the effects of information searchers' familiarity with task topics on their search behaviors, in different task types. Data were collected in a controlled laboratory experiment, participated by 32 undergraduate journalism students. Each participant searched on four tasks varying along four task facets: task product (being factual or a mix of intellectual/factual), level (the needed information being the whole document or a segment of the document), task goal (being specific, amorphous, or a mix of specific/amorphous), and complexity (being low or high). Results show that when all task types were considered together, people with different levels of topic familiarity showed differences in some search behaviors. In task types categorized by task goal and task complexity, very few behavioral variables showed differences between searchers with different levels of topic knowledge. However, in task types categorized by task product and task level, more behavioral variables showed differences between searchers with different levels of topic knowledge. Our results suggested that search behaviors may be used as implicit indicators of searchers' topic familiarity, and that task type is an important factor to consider while doing such kind of prediction.