Universiti Teknologi Mara Faculty of Information Management

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UNIVERSITI TEKNOLOGI MARA

FACULTY OF INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

Bachelor of Information Science (Hons) Information Content Management

(IM 249)

Web Content Search and Retrieval

ICM 663

INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT:

ARTICLE: FACTORS AFFECTING INFORMATION RETRIEVAL TO SOCIETY

Prepared by:

Batrisyia Raisah binti Zabha (2021119569)

Group:

IM2495A

Prepared for:

PROFESOR MADYA DR ZAHARUDIN B IBRAHIM

Date of Submission:

June 2022
INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT:

ARTICLE: FACTORS AFFECTING INFORMATION RETRIEVAL TO SOCIETY

Prepared by:

Batrisyia Raisah Zabha (2021119569)

Faculty of Information Management


Universiti Teknologi MARA
Selangor
TABLE OF CONTENT

Pages

Acknowledgement i

Abstract 1

1.0 INTRODUCTION 2

2.0 THE QUALITY OF INFORMATION 4

3.0 USERS CHARACTERISTICS 6

4.0 SEARCH QUERIES 8

5.0 CONCLUSION 10

6.0 REFERENCES 11
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The success and final outcome of this paperwork required a lot of guidance and assistance from
many people. I am extremely fortunate to have got this all along until the completion of this
assignment. What I have done is only due to such guidance and assistance and would not
forget to thank those who had helped me. I would like to express my deepest appreciation to all
those who provided me the possibility to complete this assignment. A special gratitude I would
like to give to my respected lecturer, Profesor Madya Dr Zaharudin B Ibrahim for giving me an
opportunity to do this assignment work and providing all support and guidance which made me
complete the assignment on time. I would also like to extend my gratitude to all those who have
directly and indirectly guided me in creating this case study. Many people, especially my
classmates have made valuable comment suggestions on my assignment which gave me
inspiration to improve the quality of my work. Thank you so much.

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ABSTRACT

In the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) age, information retrieval through web
and Internet has become a current trend in order to obtain information that is relevant to fulfill
their objectives in retrieval of information. People can get access to information from any
resources by entering the query into the search engine. As society consists of people from
different backgrounds, age, race and culture, the process of information retrieval may differ
based on their experience and knowledge. In this paper, it focuses on determining the factors
that affect information retrieval to society. It describes the possible reasons that affect the
society from getting the best information for the given query. Furthermore, in this paper it
emphasizes on the quality of information and its sources, the user characteristics when using
the search engine, the searching queries by the users and skills on information retrieval.
Research from previous studies is used to evaluate and analyze the research findings. The
findings of this review shows that users' experience in searching information, the value of
information and adequate searching skills can affect the process of information retrieval by
society. These indicate that to acquire relevant information, users should overcome the possible
factors that affect information retrieval by improving their knowledge and skills in retrieving
information.

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1.0 INTRODUCTION

Searching for information has become a familiar thing to society, especially in this era of
globalization. Information can be accessed and searched through various means and forms
such as paper based form or in digital form. The use of the web and the internet to obtain
information has been widely used by society. This is because this method can make it easier for
people to obtain information quickly without having to go through some complicated procedures.
92 percent of Internet users, according to G. (2021), have used the Internet to send e-mails and
use search engines. 83 percent said they wanted to discover more about health or hobbies. The
percentage of people who look for directions is 82 percent. Getting information on weather
received 81 percent of the vote and 78 percent want to get information about new products.
These showed that people are on the internet searching for various kinds of information or
documents that are relevant to their information needs. However, not all information that they
found is appropriate and suitable for what they are searching for.

Nowadays, there are a lot of search engines that are being used by people all over the world to
obtain information. Google, Yahoo, and Bing are some of the popular search engines. A search
engine is a computer programme that performs online searches on the Internet (www). The
search engines may be used as an answering machine. When people seek information, search
engines find, filter, and organize internet content and provide it to them. Nevertheless, without
best practice and good skill in searching for information, it will affect the information retrieval
process. According to Chui et al. (2019), employees spend 1.8 hours every day looking for and
acquiring information. That works out to 9.3 hours each week on average.This statement shows
that lack of efficiency in retrieving information will waste hours of time finding the right
documents or information and reducing the employee productivity.

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For people to acquire the right information, they need to have knowledge about how to use the
search engine in a correct way to get information. Users with good information retrieval skills
can retrieve a large number of documents. Given a user query, it would prioritize most relevant
documents above less relevant documents, allowing the user to focus on relevant documents
rather than scrolling through a large number of irrelevant items. Being in this fast-paced
technology development era, not everyone has the opportunity to learn and improve their
computer literacy skills especially people at the age between 45 to 60. Therefore, information
retrieval might be hard for some people in the society. The effect of not being able to get the
right information may lead to misinformation, lack of accuracy and reduce productivity. To sum
up, this paper will state factors that are affecting the process of information retrieval towards
society.

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2.0 THE QUALITY OF INFORMATION

In today's world, information is essential to almost everything people do. Facts, data, statistics,
pictures, documents and sounds are considered as information. According to W. (2019),
information can be described as something that is beyond the chance of prediction and with
information it can reduce people's uncertainty about predicting states of the world. The quality of
information is very important in retrieving information. Good information can give a lot of benefits
such as it can improve decision making by organization, help to increase productivity among
employees and effective communication between people. Information retrieval can be affected
by the quality of information obtained by the users. When the information obtained did not fulfill
the user’s information need, the process of information retrieval can be considered failed. The
quality of information can be assessed by the accuracy and reliability of the information.

The accuracy of information is crucial to everyone who is seeking and delivering the information.
The information retrieved from any sources from the Internet or paper based sources should be
validated to ensure the accuracy of data. It is because inaccurate information can lead to
serious issues with significant consequences. In research from Anderson and Rainie (2020),
they stated that in June 2017, false news headlines claimed Ethereum's founder Vitalik Buterin
had died in a car accident, causing the cryptocurrency's market value to fall by $4 billion. This
situation shows that inaccurate information can cause serious issues to individuals,
organizations and society. When people retrieve information online, they need to make sure that
the information is accurate even in small details as someone's life might depend on it. For
example, in the business industry. Inaccurate information can make the business lose a lot of
profit and their potential customers.

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Moreover, the reliability of an information is essential as information must come from a trusted
source. According to Sarfin (2021), the term "reliability" refers to the fact that one piece of
information does not contradict another piece of information from a different source. In retrieving
information on the Internet, people should look into the sources of the information obtained to
prove whether the source is reliable or not. For example, biographical information of a public
figure. In one website, it states that the person had studied Computer Science but in another
website it states Software Engineering. It shows that the source of information is unreliable to be
referred to. Scholarly, peer-reviewed articles and books published by researchers, trade or
professional articles or books written by experts, and magazine, book, and newspaper articles
written by journalists and approved by the editor are some credible sources that individuals can
utilize to receive reliable information. (Stevenson University, n.d.). Thus, information retrieval
should be done appropriately to ensure that the quality of information is being sustained.

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3.0 USERS CHARACTERISTICS

With the rise of Industry 4.0, the focus has shifted from past decades' digital technology to a
whole new level of interconnectivity via the Internet. Everything can be done online without
having to meet face-to-face. For example, a lot of libraries nowadays had been offering service
of book delivery for library users who wanted to lend books from their library collection. For
users who want to access information from any document or books, they can ask for the
electronic version of the document and access it online. All these digital and technological
developments gave a lot of benefits to society. On the contrary, people with different
backgrounds of education, skills and knowledge in technology might face certain challenges in
order to adapt to the changes of using the technology. Users’ characteristics in using the
Internet can be one of the factors that affect information retrieval to society. Users'
characteristics will be focused on computer literacy, experience of the user and literacy.

Computer literacy according to Indeed Editorial Team (2021) refers to the amount of knowledge
required to effectively operate computers and related technology. Levels of skill can range from
having a fundamental understanding of how to use common software systems, devices, and
computer applications to having a solid knowledge of computer programming. Being computer
literate is considerably crucial in information retrieval. It is essential to be able to search for
information on the internet. Employees in most organizations discover that they have inquiries
that may be swiftly answered by entering them into a search engine. Knowing how to search for
certain topics might help them have a better understanding. It may keep them informed about
the business and changing trend issues in particular.

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In present days, many schools and universities have provided their students with computer
literacy classes to teach them basic computer skills and the knowledge of searching information
through various sources. This initiative can help students move onto more advanced skills such
as retrieving information, communication, programming and critical thinking. As everything today
is mostly digital, they need to understand how to search for information safely, appropriately,
and effectively. Plus, users’ experience in information retrieval may also be one of the factors.
Lazonder, Biemans, and Wopereis (2000) conducted a comparative study in online search
between amateurs and experts. They distinguished between locating relevant material on
websites and discovering relevant websites. In the research, they found that experts were faster
and required fewer actions to find the websites they wanted. It shows that users with little
experience in information searching may affect the process of information retrieval.

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4.0 SEARCH QUERIES

As explained above, retrieving information is easier for people who are well-experienced in
searching information. Despite that, good searching strategies and techniques might be useful
for users to get better results. The amount of information accessible on the Internet can
sometimes make people overwhelmed. Users will be able to access relevant material more
quickly and simply if they plan their searches ahead of time. Users must consider the topic or
information they are looking for and come up with keywords to define it. Users may utilize
keywords to narrow down the topic they are looking for and change their search to discover
more appropriate information. (University of Nottingham, n.d.). Inadequate searching skills by
users can affect the information retrieval process. There are few search techniques that people
can use to improve their search result such as by using advanced searching techniques and
removing stopwords in the query.

According to Fisher, T. (2022), most search engines on the internet have advanced search
options, which are a collection of filters. It helps users locate the exact material they are seeking
for by narrowing the scope of a search query to exclude irrelevant information. Advanced search
is different in content depending on the search engine and the function of the web. For example
as shown in Figure 1, advanced search for google consists of language, region, last update, site
or domain, terms appearing, safe search, file type and usage rights. These options in advanced
search will help users to filter their search queries and rank the most relevant information
related to the query the user has entered.

Figure 1: Advanced Search for Google

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In addition, search queries can also be improved by eliminating stop words. Stop words are the
most common terms in an article text that may be eliminated without diverting attention from the
main content in many circumstances. It may also be defined as a term that appears in every
document but is not utilized as an index term because it does not indicate which document the
user is interested in. Examples of stop words are ‘a’, ‘of’, ‘the’, ‘and’, ‘in’, ‘to’, ‘at’ and many
more. In Figure 2, by using the application named “Cleanse Stop Words”, the original text that
includes stop words is entered in the text box. The use of this application is to increase search
and other research efficiency, the unnecessary terms are frequently eliminated during natural
language processing. Next, in Figure 3 showed the result of the text after removing the stop
words. It can be seen that by removing the stop words, the content of the text is more
straight-to-the-point and only focus on the main point of the text.

Figure 2: Original Text Before Removing Stop Words

Figure 3: Text After Removing Stop Words

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5.0 CONCLUSION

In conclusion, information retrieval can be affected by a few factors which are the quality of the
information obtained by users and whether the information is accurate and reliable. Secondly,
users’ characteristics in the context of the ability & knowledge in using computers and user
experience in retrieving information online. Thirdly, inadequate searching skills and lack of
knowledge on how to formulate search queries. Society might face these issues in the process
of information retrieval. It is because in order to obtain a good document or information they
need to know the proper way of retrieving the relevant information. Retrieving information will be
easier if people are getting themselves familiar with the use of computers and search engines in
searching for information.

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6.0 REFERENCES

Anderson, J., & Rainie, L. (2020, August 17). The Future of Truth and Misinformation Online.
Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech.
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2017/10/19/the-future-of-truth-and-misinformation-onli
ne/

Characteristics of information The-definition.com. Retrieved June 01, 2022, from


The-definition.com website: https://the-definition.com/

Chui, M., Manyika, J., Bughin, J., Dobbs, R., Roxburgh, C., Sarrazin, H., Sands, G., &
Westergren, M. (2019, February 13). The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity
through social technologies. McKinsey & Company.
https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and-telecommunications/our-insight
s/the-social-economy

Engati. (n.d.). Information Retrieval. Retrieved June 1, 2022, from


https://www.engati.com/glossary/information-retrieval#toc-what-is-information-retrieval-used-
for-

Examples of search engines - Javatpoint. (n.d.). Www.Javatpoint.Com. Retrieved June 1, 2022,


from https://www.javatpoint.com/examples-of-search-engines

Fisher, T. (2022, February 16). What Are Advanced Search Options? Lifewire.
https://www.lifewire.com/what-are-advanced-search-options-3481444

G. (2021, November 27). How People Spend Their Time Online [Infographic]. GO-GLOBE.
https://www.go-globe.com/online-time/#:%7E:text=US%20Internet%20user%20on%20avera
ge,i.e.%2016%20hours%20per%20month.&text=92%25%20of%20Internet%20users%20ha
ve,and%20for%20using%20search%20engines.

Indeed Editorial Team. (2021, February 9). Improving Your Computer Literacy: Everything You
Need to Know. Indeed Career Guide.
https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/how-to-become-computer-literat
e

IPL. (n.d.). Importance And Importance Of Information | ipl.org. Retrieved June 1, 2022, from
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7E:text=Information%20plays%20a%20vital%20role,information%20for%20any%20particula
r%20purpose.

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Lazonder, Ard & Biemans, Harm & Wopereis, Iwan. (2000). Differences between novice and
experienced users in searching information on the World Wide Web.. JASIS. 51. 576-581.

LISBDNETWORK. (2022, February 26). Nature & benefits of Information. Library & Information
Science Network. https://www.lisedunetwork.com/nature-of-information/

Sarfin, R. L. (2021, May 12). 5 Characteristics of Data Quality - See why each matters to your
business. Precisely.
https://www.precisely.com/blog/data-quality/5-characteristics-of-data-quality

Stevenson University. (n.d.). News - How to Identify Reliable Information. Retrieved June 2,
2022, from
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ext=What%20is%20reliable%20information%3F,peer%2Dreviewed%20articles%20and%20
books
University of Nottingham. (n.d.). Search skills - The University of Nottingham. Retrieved June 2,
2022, from https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/studyingeffectively/reading/searchskills/index.aspx

W. (2019). Introduction: Understanding Information Technology [Slides]. SlidePlayer.


https://slideplayer.com/slide/12632656/

West, Z. (2021, July 27). Stop Words: Removing Words Without Meaning. Αlphαrithms.
https://www.alpharithms.com/stop-words-lists-removal-195521/

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