[Sigia-l] Concepts and Categories [longish] was mixing apples and oranges and tomatoes

[Ward_Conant at URSCorp.com]

Yes, I know what they concluded, but I disagree with their 
reading of the data!

The (initial) confusion occurred before the existence of 
redundant subcategories was known, which makes me think that 
the actual cause of the (initial) confusion was the lack of 
specificity in the top-level category labels. And initial 
confusion makes further confusion more likely, IMO ...



Ward Conant
Solution Design and Production, IT Services
URS - Oak Ridge, TN
tel 865.220.8154
fax 865.483.9061







Tanya Rabourn <rabourn at columbia.edu>
Sent by: sigia-l-admin at asis.org
04/12/2002 03:47 PM

 
        To:     sigia-l at asis.org
        cc: 
        Subject:        Re: [Sigia-l] Concepts and Categories [longish] was mixing apples and 
oranges and tomatoes


Ward_Conant at URSCorp.com wrote:
> I thought the below-referenced paper spoke more to category labels than
> it did to category content (redundant or not). I.e., user "confusion"
> seemed more a product of overly general labels of top-level categories
> than a product of finding some things repeated within more than one
> category ... FWIW.


That's not what they concluded. It discusses redundancy on the next to
last page (pg.4).

"Follow up analyses showed a strong correlation between the proportion of
redundant sub categories and the frequency with which a top-level category
was confused with other categories (r (9) = .76, p < .05).  This finding
suggests that a high level of redundancy makes it very difficult for users
to learn to differentiate one category from another."

Still though, it is just one study. I don't know of any others that
address it. It would be good to see one done that involved more specific
content and top level category labels.

-Tanya
___________________________________
Tanya Rabourn <rabourn at columbia.edu>
[User Services Consultant]
AcIS R & D <www.columbia.edu/acis/rad>
tel: 212.854.0295

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