IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jamest/v43y1992i1p72-79.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The size of retrieval sets

Author

Listed:
  • Mark T. Kinnucan

Abstract

This study was concerned with the question of how much information users of online search services want when they have a search conducted. This question was investigated within the context of multiattribute decision making. Thirty‐two individuals rated their likely satisfaction with the results of hypothetical online searches on a 21‐point scale. The hypothetical searches varied in terms of the number of documents retrieved, the percentage of retrieved documents that were relevant to the searcher's topic (the precision of the search), and the cost of the search. These three attributes were combined factorially to construct the hypothetical searches. Each subject in the study rated all of the searches. The results showed that the precision of the search had the largest effect on the satisfaction ratings. The size of the retrieval set did not affect the ratings directly, but did combine with precision in a multiplicative fashion, in that high precision was not as highly valued when there were larger numbers of documents in the retrieval set. The results were interpreted in terms of a psychological theory called “information integration theory.” © 1992 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Suggested Citation

  • Mark T. Kinnucan, 1992. "The size of retrieval sets," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 43(1), pages 72-79, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jamest:v:43:y:1992:i:1:p:72-79
    DOI: 10.1002/(SICI)1097-4571(199201)43:13.0.CO;2-8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1097-4571(199201)43:13.0.CO;2-8
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/(SICI)1097-4571(199201)43:13.0.CO;2-8?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jamest:v:43:y:1992:i:1:p:72-79. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.asis.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.