Evaluating the impact of MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) terms on different types of searchers

Ying Hsang Liu; Nina Wacholder

doi:10.1016/j.ipm.2017.03.004

Evaluating the impact of MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) terms on different types of searchers

Ying Hsang Liu^*, Nina Wacholder

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

44 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

To what extent do MeSH terms improve search effectiveness for different kinds of users? We observed four different kinds of information seekers using an experimental information retrieval system: (1) search novices; (2) domain experts; (3) search experts and (4) medical librarians. Participants searched using either a version of the system in which MeSH terms were displayed or another version in which they had to formulate their own terms. The information needs were a subset of the relatively difficult topics originally created for the Text REtrieval Conference (TREC). Effectiveness of retrieval was based on the relevance judgments provided by TREC. The results of the study provide experimental evidence of the usefulness of MeSH terms and further identify the significant relationship between the user characteristics of domain knowledge and search training and the search performance in an interactive search environment.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	851-870
Number of pages	20
Journal	Information Processing and Management
Volume	53
Issue number	4
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ipm.2017.03.004
Publication status	Published - 1 Jul 2017

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abstract = "To what extent do MeSH terms improve search effectiveness for different kinds of users? We observed four different kinds of information seekers using an experimental information retrieval system: (1) search novices; (2) domain experts; (3) search experts and (4) medical librarians. Participants searched using either a version of the system in which MeSH terms were displayed or another version in which they had to formulate their own terms. The information needs were a subset of the relatively difficult topics originally created for the Text REtrieval Conference (TREC). Effectiveness of retrieval was based on the relevance judgments provided by TREC. The results of the study provide experimental evidence of the usefulness of MeSH terms and further identify the significant relationship between the user characteristics of domain knowledge and search training and the search performance in an interactive search environment.",

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Evaluating the impact of MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) terms on different types of searchers

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