Adolescent search roles
Venue
Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, vol. 64(1) (2013), pp. 173-189
Publication Year
2013
Authors
Elizabeth Foss, Hilary Hutchinson, Allison Druin, Jason Yip, Whitney Ford, Evan Golub
BibTeX
Abstract
In this article, we present an in-home observation and in-context research study
investigating how 38 adolescents aged 14-17 search on the Internet. We present the
search trends adolescents display and develop a framework of search roles that
these trends help define. We compare these trends and roles to similar trends and
roles found in prior work with children ages 7, 9, and 11. We use these comparisons
to make recommendations to adult stakeholders such as researchers, designers, and
information literacy educators about the best ways to design search tools for
children and adolescents, as well as how to use the framework of searching roles to
find better methods of educating youth searchers. Major findings include the seven
roles of adolescent searchers, and evidence that adolescents are social in their
computer use, have a greater knowledge of sources than younger children, and that
adolescents are less frustrated by searching tasks than younger children.
