A Research Plan to Study Impact of a Collaborative Web Search Tool on Novice's Query Behavior

In the past decade, research efforts dedicated to studying the process of collaborative web search have been on the rise. Yet, limited number of studies have examined the impact of collaborative information search process on novice's query behaviors. Studying and analyzing factors that influence web search behaviors, specifically users' patterns of queries when using collaborative search systems can help with making query suggestions for group users. Improvements in user query behaviors and system query suggestions help in reducing search time and increasing query success rates for novices. In this paper, we present an empirical study plan designed to investigate the influence of collaboration between experts and novices as well as use of a collaborative web search tool on novice's query behavior. In this research-in-progress study, we intend to use SearchTeam as our collaborative search tool. The results of this study are expected to provide information that could help collaborative web search tool designers to find ways to improve the query suggestions feature for group users. Additionally, this study will test the hypothesis that - having domain experts working with non-experts using collaborative search systems would immensely increase the query success rates for non-expert users, and help them learn querying strategies over the course of time. If the above hypothesis is proven, then use of collaborative web search tools during training of interns would be highly recommended.