A unified framework for post-retrieval query-performance prediction

Abstract

The query-performance prediction task is estimating the effectiveness of a search performed in response to a query in lack of relevance judgments. Post-retrieval predictors analyze the result list of top-retrieved documents. While many of these previously proposed predictors are supposedly based on different principles, we show that they can actually be derived from a novel unified prediction framework that we propose. The framework is based on using a pseudo effective and/or ineffective ranking as reference comparisons to the ranking at hand, the quality of which we want to predict. Empirical exploration provides support to the underlying principles, and potential merits, of our framework. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.