Relevance: An Interdisciplinary and Information Science Perspective

Abstract

Introduction Relevance from a historical perspective has grown and expanded into a variety of interdisciplinary scholarly environments as an extension of thematic precedents evolving mainly from philosophical underpinnings. There are many variations on the concept of as initially portrayed by the Greek philosophers, Protagorus and Gorgias, and later embedded into more modern movements espoused by William James and John Dewey. Most of these frameworks generally describe a theme that teaches us that what is known is dependent on the knowing subject (O'Neill, 1960). The seminal work of Alfred Schutz is one of the best examples of a paradigmatic shift from philosophical discussions of relativism toward the social theory aspects of relevance. Although first printed in 1932, its value as a theoretical framework for was not evident until the publication of his translated collected works in the 1960s and the eventual compilation of previously unpublished papers and lectures under the title Reflections on the Problem of Relevance (Schutz, 1970). Schutz's tripartite conceptualization of into topical, interpretive and motivational provided an approach for investigating the nature, manifestations and effects of this selective function of the mind. Information Science Research: Information Retrieval Also during the 1960s, a movement emerged that identified as an evaluative tool for resolving problems associated with measuring the effectiveness of automated information systems. Various definitions of relevance, including the following, set the tone for ongoing research in the field of information science: * a measure of information conveyed by a document relative to a query (Goffman, 1964). * the criterion used to quantify the phenomenon involved when individuals (users) judge the relationship, utility, importance, degree of match, fit, proximity, appropriateness, closeness, pertinence, value or bearing of documents or document representations to an information requirement, need, question, statement, description of research, treatment, etc. (Rees, 1966) These, and other early definitions, generated further explorations of as a theoretical concept in information science, while other disciplines pursued from differing perspectives. For 30 years there has been no practical substitute for the concept of as a criterion measure for quantifying the effectiveness of information retrieval (IR) systems (Rees, 1966). The fuzziness surrounding the nature of has led to confusion in identifying appropriate criteria, measures, measuring instruments and methodology. In the context of a user's interaction with an IR system, relevance is a psychological predicate that describes his acceptance or rejection of a relation between the meaning or content of a document and meaning or content of a question (Taube, 1965). It is the relationship, not the acceptance or rejection, that most studies have ignored. Saracevic (1975) and Schamber, Eisenberg and Nilan (1990) focused attention on why users accepted or rejected, instead of looking at the relationships of meanings. When is represented, it is not a fine absolute judgment; it is in terms of comparative and gross absolute judgments. It is these intuitions of that must be accounted for, not the simple presence or absence of relevance, but the degrees of (Sperber & Wilson, 1986). This approach to as relativism is not to be equated with ambiguity. A person chooses for himself that alternative in a dichotomized construct through which he anticipates the greater possibility for extension and definition of his system (Kelly, 1955). While the construct of black versus white is composed of mutually exclusive alternatives (just as relevant versus irrelevant is so composed), this does not preclude the use of the construct in a relativistic manner. …