Lau Annie Y S, Coiera Enrico, Zrimec Tatjana, Compton Paul
Centre for Health Informatics, Australian Institute of Health Innovation, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
J Med Internet Res. 2010 Jun 30;12(2):e25. doi: 10.2196/jmir.1396.
Searching the Web for documents using information retrieval systems plays an important part in clinicians' practice of evidence-based medicine. While much research focuses on the design of methods to retrieve documents, there has been little examination of the way different search engine capabilities influence clinician search behaviors.
Previous studies have shown that use of task-based search engines allows for faster searches with no loss of decision accuracy compared with resource-based engines. We hypothesized that changes in search behaviors may explain these differences.
In all, 75 clinicians (44 doctors and 31 clinical nurse consultants) were randomized to use either a resource-based or a task-based version of a clinical information retrieval system to answer questions about 8 clinical scenarios in a controlled setting in a university computer laboratory. Clinicians using the resource-based system could select 1 of 6 resources, such as PubMed; clinicians using the task-based system could select 1 of 6 clinical tasks, such as diagnosis. Clinicians in both systems could reformulate search queries. System logs unobtrusively capturing clinicians' interactions with the systems were coded and analyzed for clinicians' search actions and query reformulation strategies.
The most frequent search action of clinicians using the resource-based system was to explore a new resource with the same query, that is, these clinicians exhibited a "breadth-first" search behaviour. Of 1398 search actions, clinicians using the resource-based system conducted 401 (28.7%, 95% confidence interval [CI] 26.37-31.11) in this way. In contrast, the majority of clinicians using the task-based system exhibited a "depth-first" search behavior in which they reformulated query keywords while keeping to the same task profiles. Of 585 search actions conducted by clinicians using the task-based system, 379 (64.8%, 95% CI 60.83-68.55) were conducted in this way.
This study provides evidence that different search engine designs are associated with different user search behaviors.
使用信息检索系统在网络上搜索文档在临床医生基于证据的医学实践中起着重要作用。虽然许多研究侧重于文档检索方法的设计，但很少有人研究不同搜索引擎功能对临床医生搜索行为的影响方式。
先前的研究表明，与基于资源的搜索引擎相比，使用基于任务的搜索引擎可以实现更快的搜索，且不会损失决策准确性。我们假设搜索行为的变化可以解释这些差异。
总共75名临床医生（44名医生和31名临床护士顾问）被随机分配使用基于资源或基于任务的临床信息检索系统版本，在大学计算机实验室的受控环境中回答有关8个临床场景的问题。使用基于资源系统的临床医生可以从6种资源中选择1种，如PubMed；使用基于任务系统的临床医生可以从6种临床任务中选择1种，如诊断。两个系统中的临床医生都可以重新制定搜索查询。对悄悄记录临床医生与系统交互的系统日志进行编码，并分析临床医生的搜索行为和查询重新制定策略。
使用基于资源系统的临床医生最常见的搜索行为是使用相同的查询探索新资源，也就是说，这些临床医生表现出“广度优先”的搜索行为。在1398次搜索行为中，使用基于资源系统的临床医生以这种方式进行了401次（28.7%，95%置信区间[CI]26.37-31.11）。相比之下，大多数使用基于任务系统的临床医生表现出“深度优先”的搜索行为，即他们在保持相同任务配置文件的同时重新制定查询关键词。在使用基于任务系统的临床医生进行的585次搜索行为中，有379次（64.8%，95%CI 60.83-68.55）是以这种方式进行的。
本研究提供了证据表明不同的搜索引擎设计与不同的用户搜索行为相关。
