Semantic annotation based exploratory search for information analysts

The system presented in this article aims to improve information access through the use of semantic annotation utilizing a non-traditional approach. Instead of applying semantic annotations to enhance the internal information access mechanisms, we use them to empower the user of an information access system through an innovative named entity-based user interface – NameSieve. NameSieve was built to support an intelligence analyst during the process of exploratory search, an advanced type of search requiring multiple iterations of retrieval interleaved with browsing and analyzing the retrieved information. The proposed approach was implemented in the NameSieve system so that the system can transparently present a summary of search results in the form of entity “clouds.” Therefore, these clouds allow the analyst to further explore the results in a novel manner, acting together as a faceted browsing interface. We ran a user study (with ten subjects) to examine the effect of NameSieve, and the study results reported in the paper demonstrate that this new way of applying semantic annotation information was actively used and was evaluated positively by the subjects. It enabled the subjects to work more productively and bring back most relevant documents.     

Adaptive visualization for exploratory information retrieval

As the volume and breadth of online information is rapidly increasing, ad hoc search systems become less and less efficient to answer information needs of modern users. To support the growing complexity of search tasks, researchers in the field of information developed and explored a range of approaches that extend the traditional ad hoc retrieval paradigm. Among these approaches, personalized search systems and exploratory search systems attracted many followers. Personalized search explored the power of artificial intelligence techniques to provide tailored search results according to different user interests, contexts, and tasks. In contrast, exploratory search capitalized on the power of human intelligence by providing users with more powerful interfaces to support the search process. As these approaches are not contradictory, we believe that they can re-enforce each other. We argue that the effectiveness of personalized search systems may be increased by allowing users to interact with the system and learn/investigate the problem in order to reach the final goal. We also suggest that an interactive visualization approach could offer a good ground to combine the strong sides of personalized and exploratory search approaches. This paper proposes a specific way to integrate interactive visualization and personalized search and introduces an adaptive visualization based search system Adaptive VIBE that implements it. We tested the effectiveness of Adaptive VIBE and investigated its strengths and weaknesses by conducting a full-scale user study. The results show that Adaptive VIBE can improve the precision and the productivity of the personalized search system while helping users to discover more diverse sets of information.     

Motivations and Benefits of the Travel Experiences of Older Adults

The motivations and benefits of educational travel among individuals aged 55 years old and over were examined in this study. A total of 136 older adults enrolled in Elderhostel programs participated in this study and reported their perceived benefits and motivations for engaging in educational travel experiences. Correlation analyses were used to explore relationships between the adults' perceived benefits and motivations. Analyses of variance were conducted and significant differences in adults' motivations for educational travel were found by gender, education level, health, and activity level of the program. The findings from this study are discussed in terms of successful aging, and implications for organizations offering educational travel programs are provided.     

A Meta-Analysis of Morphological Interventions in English: Effects on Literacy Outcomes for School-Age Children

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of morphological instruction on language and literacy outcomes by synthesizing 92 standardized mean differences (d) from 30 independent studies. Findings show a moderate overall effect of morphological instruction ([dbar] = 0.32), suggesting that children receiving morphological instruction performed significantly better on measures of literacy achievement than comparison groups. Moderator analyses showed that intervention effect varied depending on the literacy outcome. There were significant and moderate intervention effects on morphological knowledge ([dbar] = 0.44), phonological awareness ([dbar] = 0.48), vocabulary ([dbar] = 0.34), decoding ([dbar] = 0.59), and spelling ([dbar] = 0.30) but not on reading comprehension or fluency. Results also suggested differences in effectiveness related to age and research design but not unit of intervention, scope, length, and learner type. Effect sizes decrease by school level (e.g., greater for younger students than middle school and upper elementary students). Also, there were larger effects for quasi-experimental than experimental studies and for researcher-designed measures than for standardized measures. Implications for educational settings and research agendas are discussed.     

Examining the influence of teacher behavior and curriculum-based movement breaks

Little research has explored the impact of teacher behavior in the relationship between classroom movement breaks and student outcomes. The authors' primary purpose was to explore teacher behavior during classroom movement breaks to determine if teacher behavior served as a moderating variable in the relationship between physical activity and student achievement. The second major aim was to examine these relationships across two different types of movement breaks: (a) academic-content movement breaks and (b) aerobic-based movement breaks. Children (n = 466) in Grades 3–5 from four elementary schools served as participants in the study. Results found that teachers who encouraged students to move and teachers who moved themselves did not necessary have students with higher activity levels during the movement breaks. However, significant differences across the type of movement break provided were found. Implications and limitations are discussed.     

Reordering and Reflecting Factors for Simulation Studies With Exploratory Factor Analysis

This article describes the REREFACT R package, which provides a postrotation algorithm that reorders or reflects factors for each replication of a simulation study with exploratory factor analysis (EFA). The purpose of REREFACT is to provide a general algorithm written in freely available software, R, dedicated to addressing the possibility that a nonuniform order or sign pattern of the factors could be observed across replications. The algorithm implemented in REREFACT proceeds in 4 steps. Step 1 determines the total number of equivalent forms, I, of the vector of factors, η. Step 2 indexes, i = 1, 2 … I, each equivalent form of η (i.e., ηⁱ) via a unique permutation matrix, P (i.e., Pⁱ). Step 3 determines which ηⁱ each replication follows. Step 4 uses the appropriate Pⁱ to reorder or re-sign parameter estimates within each replication so that all replications uniformly follow the order and sign pattern defined by the population values. Results from two simulation studies provided evidence for the efficacy of the REREFACT to identify and remediate equivalent forms of η in models with EFA only (i.e., Example 1) and in fuller parameterizations of exploratory structural equation modeling (i.e., Example 2). How to use REREFACT is briefly demonstrated prior to the Discussion section by providing annotations for key commands and condensed output using a subset of simulated data from Example 1.     

Meta-analysis in the social sciences:

Meta-analysis is a class of statistical methods for combining the results from a series of studies addressing the same research question. These methods can powerfully test hypotheses that cannot be answered clearly with one or a few studies and eliminates the ambiguity that results from narrative reviews of a research literature or from counting the number of studies that support a particular conclusion. The usefulness of meta-analysis is demonstrated by reviewing instances in psychotherapy, education, and medicine that show how meta-analysis was used successfully to end acrimonious debate and reach a firm and lasting conclusion.     

An evaluation of adaptive filtering in the context of realistic task-based information exploration

Exploratory search increasingly becomes an important research topic. Our interests focus on task-based information exploration, a specific type of exploratory search performed by a range of professional users, such as intelligence analysts. In this paper, we present an evaluation framework designed specifically for assessing and comparing performance of innovative information access tools created to support the work of intelligence analysts in the context of task-based information exploration. The motivation for the development of this framework came from our needs for testing systems in task-based information exploration, which cannot be satisfied by existing frameworks. The new framework is closely tied with the kind of tasks that intelligence analysts perform: complex, dynamic, and multiple facets and multiple stages. It views the user rather than the information system as the center of the evaluation, and examines how well users are served by the systems in their tasks. The evaluation framework examines the support of the systems at users’ major information access stages, such as information foraging and sense-making. The framework is accompanied by a reference test collection that has 18 tasks scenarios and corresponding passage-level ground truth annotations. To demonstrate the usage of the framework and the reference test collection, we present a specific evaluation study on CAFÉ, an adaptive filtering engine designed for supporting task-based information exploration. This study is a successful use case of the framework, and the study indeed revealed various aspects of the information systems and their roles in supporting task-based information exploration.