Towards an integrated clickstream data analysis framework for understanding web users' information behavior

Abstract

Clickstream data offers an unobtrusive data source for understanding web users’ information behavior beyond searching. However, it remains underutilized due to the lack of structured analysis procedures. This paper provides an integrated framework for information scientists to employ in their exploitation of clickstream data, which could contribute to more comprehensive research on users’information behavior. Our proposed framework consists of two major components, i.e., data preparation and data investigation. Data preparation is the process of collecting, cleaning, parsing, and coding data, whereas data investigation includes examining data at three different granularity levels, namely, footprint, movement, and pathway. To clearly present our data analysis process with the analysis framework, we draw examples from an empirical analysis of clickstream data of OPAC users’ behavior. Overall, this integrated analysis framework is designed to be independent of any specific research settings so that it can be easily adopted by future researchers for their own clickstream datasets and research questions.