Complexity and Social Networks Blog: Results of quick survey on search strategies

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3 April 2007

Results of quick survey on search strategies

Thanks to those who participated in my quick survey on individual search strategies. Here's an attempt to distill your answers into a few sentences.

As expected, the main questions that arise on your jobs can be classified as knowledge-intensive, and you most likely cannot find one correct answer to them. Some examples: Trying to establish what "the best" system, or practice, is (I suspect that we all have subjective criteria in deciding what's best), what do we know about xyz (rather open-ended, I'd say), finding out about a certain procedure, event, etc.

As for your search heuristics, Google comes in first place, and second, and third, and...Several plug-ins and other tricks render those Google searches more sophisticated (thanks for the pointers, Allan and David!), and most of you tend to find what you're looking for by using search engines. Which means, most of you do not actually need the interaction with other individuals to answer most of your questions. Gosh, I'm trying to remember what life (and work) was like before Google! Obviously, I have a biased (and non-representative) sample of individuals here, but still, what an interesting result.

My final question was whether your search behavior varies according to the questions you have, and the consensus was, yes, it does, but turning to "offline methods" or other people really came off as a last resort. Again, probably - at least in part - due to the still rather geeky nature of the blogosphere, but while I'm typing this I'm thinking of something else: Since I asked people to assess their search behavior, they could have made the implicit assumption that search is mainly done using search engines, therefore a priori excluding the dialogue with other individuals as a possibility to search for answers. Was that the case? Or are our search engines getting so good that they can replace human interaction? I'd be curious to find out. Maybe I should google it.

Posted by Maria Binz-Scharf at April 3, 2007 3:35 PM

Comments

I'm late to take part of your quick survey Maria but what a nice bunch of results! Actually, yesterday I came across this source that it might be interesting for the community.
"Exploiting freely available software for social research" http://sru.soc.surrey.ac.uk/SRU48.html
The current issue of Update (a magazine published by the Department of Sociology of the University of Surrey, UK) "describes ingenious uses of software and websites including:
· The use of autocorrect to create a shorthand that makes it quicker and easier to transcribe qualitative data
· The use of desktop search engines and their application as a basic tool for analysing uncoded transcripts
· Intelligent search strategies that improve the effectiveness of Internet and desktop searches
· The use of ATnotes as virtual post-it notes"
Interesting easy reading very much in the line of your findings. Good reading!

Posted by: Irene Lopez de Vallejo at April 4, 2007 5:38 AM

You're not too late, Irene! This wasn't a scientifically rigorous exercise; just a way to get a feel for how what we find in our field observations compares to the experience of a small random sample. I'd be especially interested in reading your opinion on that lack of human interaction in search, if your experience diverges from the other respondents.

Posted by: Maria Binz-Scharf at April 4, 2007 10:35 AM

In my opinion nothing replaces human interaction in search - whatever advice you are seeking you can always "google" it, which gives you a range of options - so it's almost like brainstorming with the search engine - but after the initial "concept catering party" (if this has any sense in english) I need to talk to the 3 or 4 people I trust and admire to pick their brains on whatever I'm researching at the moment. For the last 3 years I've relied in a computer scientist, two arquitects involved in social research and a philosopher/journalist, and it's great to count on them and the variety of their opinions. Then I go back to my own thinking space and take a decision.Am I weird? Cheers , Irene

Posted by: Irene Lopez de Vallejo at April 12, 2007 5:17 AM

Google doesn't always have the answer, though Wikipedia just might. Actually, I believe it was pronounced to be one of the most trafficked sites online.

Posted by: HDR at April 22, 2007 5:20 AM

Hey Maria,

In line with your question I asked the students in the class I am teaching this semester:

"What do you do if you have a question and don't know the answer?"

19 out of 19 said they would always google first and only ask someone else if no computer is around.

Posted by: Alexander Schellong at May 4, 2007 6:39 PM

Thanks Alexander for increasing the representativeness of my sample! I'd be curious to know more about the class: What is the topic? Are the students more computer-savvy than "average" college students today?

Posted by: Maria Binz-Scharf at May 5, 2007 12:34 PM

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