Abstract
Relevance has a long history of scholarly investigation and discussion in information science. One of its notable concepts is that of ‘user-based’ relevance. The purpose of this study is to examine how users construct their per spective on the concept of relevance; to analyze what the constituent elements (facets) of relevance are, in terms of core-periphery status; and to compare the difference of constructions of two groups of users (information users vs. information professionals) as applied with a social representations theory perspective. Data were collected from 244 information users and 123 information professionals through use of a free word association method. Three methods were employed to analyze data: (1) content analysis was used to elicit 26 categories (facets) of the concept of relevance; (2) structural analysis of social representations was used to determine the core-periphery status of those facets in terms of coreness, sum of similarity, and weighted frequency; and, (3) maximum tree analysis was used to present and compare the differences between the two groups. Elicited cate gories in this study overlap with the ones from previous relevance studies, while the findings of a core-periphery analysis show that Topicality, User-needs, Reliability/Credibility, and Importance are configured as core concepts for the information user group, while Topicality, User-needs, Reliability/Credibility, and Currency are core con cepts for the information professional group. Differences between the social representations of relevance revealed that Topicality was similar to User-needs and to Importance. Author is closely related to Title while Reliability/ Credibility is linked with Currency. Easiness/Clarity is similar to Accuracy. Overall, information users and
Highlights
Relevance has a rich history as a core concept in information research but it and the way it is measured might be based on a fundamental weakness
Are information users’ views different from other groups of information users -- including information professionals who use relevance criteria? In short, does a relevance judgment tell us about a user decision or does it inform us about how individuals react to the ways in which researchers create measurement scales to classify how others might make information decisions? This problem has deep roots, and it emerged long ago in research by Cuadra and Katter (1967, 1968) and in their related studies (System Development Corporation, 1967; Katter 1968)
Those results were often ignored by later researchers who resorted to what appears as reasonable measurement scales, but may reflect how the researcher assesses relevance and not how users evaluate information
Summary
Relevance has a rich history as a core concept in information research but it and the way it is measured might be based on a fundamental weakness. Does a relevance judgment tell us about a user decision or does it inform us about how individuals react to the ways in which researchers create measurement scales to classify how others might make information decisions? This problem has deep roots, and it emerged long ago in research by Cuadra and Katter (1967, 1968) and in their related studies (System Development Corporation, 1967; Katter 1968) Those results were often ignored by later researchers who resorted to what appears as reasonable measurement scales, but may reflect how the researcher assesses relevance and not how users evaluate information. It would be important to anchor relevance in the words of the user and re-define it in their terms
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