A cognitive analysis of map users' understanding of geographic information systems' images

Abstract

With increasing frequency, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are being used by cartographers and non-cartographers alike to display spatial data. The GIS can create a wide variety of maps, some of which were extremely time-consuming to produce manually. Also, a cathode ray tube (CRT) monitor differs from paper as a display medium for maps in terms of resolution, colour, clarity, luminance, and glare. This new production environment, in combination with map producers who are not trained in cartography, provides a number of crucial research topics which cartographers have been urged to investigate. This research study measured the levels of understanding shown by GIS experienced and non-experienced subjects on a wide range of GIS map use tasks. The subjects' performances also were compared on the basis of the use of either printed maps or standardized screen images to determine if the differences between the two media caused significant differences in performance. Their performances were also compared on the basis of gender as some studies in geography and cartography have shown gender differences in spatial ability. No statistically significant differences were found in performance levels whether the subjects used the printed maps or the screen maps. The gender variable was responsible for statistically significant performance differences on some of the map use tasks. The largest differences were found among the non-experienced subjects with the males scoring higher than the female subjects. Very little difference was found between the scores of the experienced males and females. There was evidence of an interaction between the gender and experience variables, that is, experience had a different effect of the subjects' scores depending on the the gender of the subjects. The presence of GIS experience resulted in significantly better performances on the majority of the map tasks, primarily those requiring specific GIS knowledge. There was little difference in the scores of the experienced compared to the non-experienced subjects on simple map reading tasks or tasks based on colour differentiation. There was evidence of an interaction between the output and experience variables.