The effects of conceptual description and search practice on users' mental models and information seeking in a case-based reasoning retrieval system

This paper reportes a study that investigated the effects of conceptual description and search practice on users’ mental models and information seeking in a case-based reasoning retrieval (CBR) system with a best match search mechanism. This study also examined how the presence of a mental model affects the users’ search performance and satisfaction in this system. The results of this study revealed that the conceptual description and search practice treatments do not have significantly different effects on the types of user’s mental models, search correctness, and search satisfaction. However, the search practice group spent significantly less time than the conceptual description group in finding the results. Qualitative analysis for the subjects’ post mental models revealed that subjects in the conceptual description group seem to have more complete mental models of the best match system than those in the search practice group. This study also found that subjects with the best matchmental models have significantly higher search correctness and search result satisfaction than subjects without the best match mental models. However, the best match mental models do not guarantee less search time in finding the results. This study did not find a significant correlation among search time, search correctness and search satisfaction. The study concludes with suggestions for future research and implications for system developers who are interested in CBR retrieval systems. 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.