The Role of the FUM Students' Demographic Features in the Relevance Judgment Scores of Their Information Retrieval Results in Search Engines

In order to design user-friendly information retrieval systems, it is important to pay attention to characteristics of users. Therefore, the aim of the present study is to investigate the role of demographic variables of users during their search in search engines. Method: This is an applied study in terms of purpose, which was done by the evaluation method. To conduct the research, firstly, 32 subject headings were selected from the "Persian Subject Headings" and simulated work tasks were developed based on the selected subject headings with the cooperation of three experts in knowledge and information science. Then, according to the characteristics of the population, such as gender, grade and field of study, age and residential area of the students of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, 192 people were selected as sample members. The research form was then given to them, which consisted of three sections: demographic information, simulated work tasks, and a place to record relevant links. They were then asked to study the simulated work tasks that they had developed based on the selected subject headings from the Persian Subject headings, and search in Google, Parsijoo, Rismoon, and Yooz search engines in Persian language, and then to record the relevant URLs in the given form. Finally, based on the recorded URLs, the relevance score of the students' retrieved results was calculated according to the Jaccard index. To determine the validity of the research tools, the opinions of faculty members of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad were asked as well as the relevant literature was reviewed. Pearson test was also used to determine the reliability of the study, which confirmed the reliability of the study with a correlation coefficient of 0.725. Findings: The findings indicated that the FUM students’ judgement relevance scores with a 95% confidence level were about 0/36 to 0/42. Furthermore, there were significant differences between the students' judgement relevance scores in terms of their educational levels, age groups and their residential areas, while there were no differences between the student's judgement relevance scores in terms of gender and academic field. Originality/value: It can be said that paying attention to both personalization and customization in designing information retrieval systems will satisfy users. Thus, this paper finally directs the attention of information managers and designers of information retrieval systems to this fact that in designing information systems, more attention must be paid to the three demographic variables, namely education levels, age groups, and residential areas.