Publications
From: Chris Kimble
Date: 23 Jan 2006
Subject: Article: Combining ethnographic and clickstream data to identify user browsing strategies
Information Research, Vol. 11, No. 2. (January 2006)
Abstract:
The strategies that people use to browse Websites are difficult to
analyse and understand: quantitative data can lack information about
what a user actually intends to do, while qualitative data tends to be
localised and is impractical to gather for large samples. This paper
describes a novel approach that combines data from direct observation,
user surveys and server logs to analyse users' browsing behaviour. It is
based on a longitudinal study of university students' use of a Website
related to one of their courses. The data were analysed by using
Footstep graphs to categorise browsing behaviour into pre-defined
strategies and comparing these with data from questionnaires and direct
observation of the students' actual use of the site. Initial results
indicated that in certain cases the patterns from server logs matched
the observed browsing strategies as described in the literature. In
addition, by cross-referencing the quantitative and qualitative data, a
number of insights were gained into potential problems. This study
shows how combining quantitative and qualitative approaches can provide
an insight into changes in user browsing behaviour over time. It also
identifies some potential methodological problems in studies of browsing
behaviour and indicates some directions for future research.
http://informationr.net/ir/11-2/paper249.html
Chris Kimble
Department of Computer Science, University of York,
Home: http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/~kimble
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