Study of order effects in the search for information on the Web: the case of an experiment about smoking cessation techniques

• Main Authors: Stéphane AMATO, Eric BOUTIN
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Etudes Scientifiques Spécialisées Appliquées aux Communications Humaines, Economiques, Sociales et Symboliques 2013-07-01
• Series: Essachess
• Subjects: information retrieval; cognitive biases; order effects; primacy effect; web
• Online Access: http://www.essachess.com/index.php/jcs/article/view/194/207

This article deals with cognitive biases that could affect the judgment of net surfers while reading a list of answers, after a query in a search engine. The hypothesis is made that order effects i.e primacy and/or recency could be observed in such contexts. The authors choose to test it by doing an experiment in controlled-environment. So they decide to focus more particularly on the field of smoking cessation techniques and refine their questioning as follows: After a query into a search engine, does the place of a medication in a list determines the idea of its relevance, for a student population? By comparing three different groups, the authors demonstrate a primacy effect and no recency effect. In addition, they highlight five moderating variables: sex of the individual, the fact that he is a smoker or not, the fact that he had, or not, originally any opinion about methods of smoking cessation, the fact whether or not he is affected by health problems related to smoking, speed reading on the Web interface. The authors conclude speaking in favour of information literacy education. For them, in the case presented, it would be relevant as a medical point of view, in terms of public health, as a point of socio-economic development.