Profiling a non-medical professional searcher on a medical domain: What do search patterns and demographic details reveal?

Abstract

Previous research is able to distinguish search patterns of domain experts and non-domain experts. However, little is known about the finer details of a non-domain expert searcher. This is especially so when a non-domain expert performs a search on an expert type domain. Do non-domain experts search similarly? What can we learn and infer from their search patterns? More importantly can we identify the searcher behind the search? In this paper, we perform a study of non-domain experts search behavior on an expert domain. Our results indicate search patterns can be used to generally classify a non-domain expert searcher. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.