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doi:10.1016/j.ipm.2007.08.002 
Copyright © 2007 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved.
Contextual factors affecting the utility of surrogates within exploratory search
Ian Ruthven
, a, 
, Mark Bailliea, Leif Azzopardia, Ralf Bieriga, Emma Nicola, Simon Sweeneya and Murat Yacikia
Received 21 December 2006;
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Abstract
In this paper we investigate how information surrogates might be useful in exploratory search and what information it is useful for a surrogate to contain. By comparing assessments based on artificially created information surrogates, we investigate the effect of the source of information, the quality of an information source and the date of information upon the assessment process. We also investigate how varying levels of topical knowledge, assessor confidence and prior expectation affect the assessment of information surrogates. We show that both types of contextual information affect how the information surrogates are judged and what actions are performed as a result of the surrogates.
Keywords: Surrogates; Exploratory search; Ciqa; Relevance assessment
Article Outline
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Related work
- 3. Complex interactive question answering (ciqa)
- 4. Variables under study
- 4.1. Assessor variables
- 4.2. Question variables
- 4.3. Answer variables
- 4.4. Summary of interaction forms
- 5. Individual variables
- 5.1. Assessor variables
- 5.2. Question variables
- 5.3. Answer variables
- 5.3.1. Quality of answer
- 5.3.2. Expectation of answer
- 5.3.3. Next action on answer
- 5.3.4. Summary
- 6. Results on contextual information in surrogates
- 6.1. Comparing answers with or without supporting evidence
- 6.2. Comparing recent against older answers
- 6.3. Comparing good against weak sources
- 6.4. Summary
- 7. Results on assessor and answers
- 7.1. Knowledge, answer quality and next actions
- 7.2. Confidence, answer quality and next actions
- 7.3. Prior expectation, answer quality and next actions
- 7.4. Summary
- 8. Discussion
- 9. Conclusion
- Appendix. Appendix
- References
