The Impact of Cognitive Styles, Task Types and the Experience on User's Web Search Performance

To study the user's search behavior on the web and the impact of wholist-analytic cognitive styles, task types and search experience on their performance. Methodology/Approach: This is an applied research using mixed methodology approach. The qualitative part is analyzed using content analysis and for the quantitative part survey is employed. The population consists of 44 researchers in different science fields. Data collected using Riding's Cognitive Style Analysis test, Web experience questionnaire and three search tasks. There exist some differences in search behavior of people with wholist and analytic cognitive styles, such that wholists use more search strategies for fulfilling tasks compared to analytic users. Also, search performance of two groups was different. Analytic users spent more time and visited more nodes to accomplish their tasks. However, the statistical analysis shows no significant difference between wholist and analytic users regarding the number of visited nodes and the time spent on finishing a task. Moreover, there was no significant difference between task levels and also between cognitive styles and experience in number of visited nodes and the time spent to retrieve information. Also, the statistical result considering difference between task types and cognitive styles follows the same rule. The research findings can help in better understanding user's web search behavior in terms of their cognitive styles; also the practical implication of the research is in user training and designing search tools. Besides, this research can be used in developing models for web search.