Identifying the Impact of Domain Knowledge and Cognitive Style on Web-based Information Search Behavior

Although information searching in hypermedia environments has become a new important problem solving capability, there is not much known about what types of individual characteristics constitute a successful information search behavior. This study mainly investigated which of the 2 factors, 1) natural characteristics (cognitive style), and 2) acquired knowledge (domain knowledge) had a stronger influence on search behavior, and what types of impact these had on search activities. To examine search behavior, the search outcome precision, the searching time, the number of URL nodes, and the number of keywords were analyzed and the demographic backgrounds including the searching experience and gender were also measured to discover any correlation with the major variables. The study findings suggest that domain knowledge was not associated with any other search activities but affected only the search precision. Cognitive style meanwhile did not affect search precision but interacted with the searching experience and this interaction affected the total length of searching time. Finally, there was no correlation found between 2 variables: domain knowledge and cognitive style.