How to measure Information Retrieval?


	The limit of search engines
	What are metadata?
	Subject- and reader oriented metadata
	How to improve metadata?
	To what information should we add metadata?
	Faceted interfaces
	Where do you store metadata?
	How to measure reader performance?
	How to measure information retrieval?
	How to test information retrieval?
	Improve the interface
	Show related information
	Provide language aids
	Example
	Contact Marcel van Mackelenbergh
	Reactions

How to measure information retrieval?

Statement

Information retrieval is the task of finding information.

Translation

Since Information Retrieval is a task, we can come up usability requirements for this task. Below you find the accepted factors that determine usability, translated for the situation of information retrieval.

Usability factor	Information retrieval factor	Measurement
Effectivity	Recall: is all the relevant information found?	Information elements that are relevant but are not found Usability of the information that is found
Efficiency	Precision: is only relevant information found?	Information elements that are found but are not relevant Time it takes to search 'Wrong' choices that do not contribute to the search
Satisfaction		Score on a questionnaire inquiring after the ease of use and other factors that show the liking of the reader

Application

Since we can draw up measurements for information retrieval, we can also:

create requirements for information retrieval tasks
test these requirements in an information retrieval test

For information retrieval requirements, we need to come up with values for each of the measurements in the table above for each information retrieval task. In "How to test information retrieval?" you will see how to set up, conduct and analyze a test for information retrieval.