Should GPO Pay for Positioning on Google?: Undergraduates' Success in Locating U.S. Government Information on the Web

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Last Modified
  • February 28, 2019
Creator
  • Ovitt, James
    • Affiliation: School of Information and Library Science
Abstract
  • This paper describes an exploratory study of undergraduate students' success in locating U.S. government information on the Web. The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of how undergraduates look for government information on the Web and to examine the problems they encounter. Ten undergraduate students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill were recruited to participate in Web searching sessions. Participants were required to locate documents and find answers to imposed questions requiring U.S. government information available on the Web. Participants answered an average of 1.7 out of four (42.5%) questions correctly. They had greater success with predictable source questions than with unpredictable source questions. Participants initiated 35 out of 40 total search tasks with a Google search. Domain knowledge, working with dates, and locating key government search interfaces such as GPO Access, Thomas, American FactFinder, and the National Center for Education Statistics homepage affected success.
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  • In Copyright
Advisor
  • Marchionini, Gary
Degree granting institution
  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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  • 49 p.
Access right
  • Open access
Date uploaded
  • December 10, 2010

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