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Kilian, Melanie A. ; Elsweiler, David ; Ruthven, Ian

Right answers to wrong questions: The dysfunctional nature of information needs

Kilian, Melanie A. , Elsweiler, David und Ruthven, Ian (2025) Right answers to wrong questions: The dysfunctional nature of information needs. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology.

Veröffentlichungsdatum dieses Volltextes: 06 Aug 2025 08:32
Artikel
DOI zum Zitieren dieses Dokuments: 10.5283/epub.77492


Zusammenfassung

People frequently experience difficulties when seeking information to complete tasks. To overcome these difficulties, people require help. Regarding struggles with information needs, past research focuses on unclear information requests, such as ambiguous, under-specified, and ill-defined queries, and repairing these by user-led strategies (e.g., clarification). In an exploratory qualitative ...

People frequently experience difficulties when seeking information to complete tasks. To overcome these difficulties, people require help. Regarding struggles with information needs, past research focuses on unclear information requests, such as ambiguous, under-specified, and ill-defined queries, and repairing these by user-led strategies (e.g., clarification). In an exploratory qualitative study where information clerks were interviewed, we, however, found that well-formed and seemingly reasonable requests can conceal misconceptions inquirers have (e.g., about what information is required for their current task) and, therefore, interfere with information seeking and task completion, too. Besides being more difficult to identify than unclear requests, such hidden misconceptions also undermine current user-led repair strategies as they cause inquirers to believe they are making appropriate requests. Understanding misconceptions in information seeking and requests concealing these is, therefore, essential to building more effective information systems. Our study contributes to addressing this task: It is the first to provide empirical insights into how misconceptions can negatively influence information requests, information-seeking conversations, and task completion. Ultimately, our findings highlight that inquirers' perceived information needs can present an unreliable and even counterproductive basis for task support, implying that researchers and professionals should rethink the prevailing focus on user requests in designing information systems.



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Details

DokumentenartArtikel
Titel eines Journals oder einer ZeitschriftJournal of the Association for Information Science and Technology
Verlag:Wiley
Datum31 Juli 2025
InstitutionenSprach- und Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaften > Institut für Information und Medien, Sprache und Kultur (I:IMSK)
Sprach- und Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaften > Institut für Information und Medien, Sprache und Kultur (I:IMSK) > Lehrstuhl für Informationswissenschaft (Prof. Dr. Udo Kruschwitz)
Informatik und Data Science > Fachbereich Menschzentrierte Informatik > Lehrstuhl für Informationswissenschaft (Prof. Dr. Udo Kruschwitz)
Identifikationsnummer
WertTyp
10.1002/asi.70010DOI
Dewey-Dezimal-Klassifikation000 Informatik, Informationswissenschaft, allgemeine Werke > 004 Informatik
StatusVeröffentlicht
BegutachtetJa, diese Version wurde begutachtet
An der Universität Regensburg entstandenZum Teil
URN der UB Regensburgurn:nbn:de:bvb:355-epub-774929
Dokumenten-ID77492

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