OR/16/047 Introduction

Nkisi-Orji, I. 2016. Semantic information retrieval for geoscience resources: results and analysis of an online questionnaire of current web search experiences. British Geological Survey Internal Report, OR/16/047.

This report is on findings from the questionnaire ‘Semantic web searches for geoscience resources’ completed by staff of British Geological Survey (BGS). The questionnaire was designed to better understand current web search habits, preferences, and the reception of semantic search features.

Response statistics

Responses to this opt-in survey were collected online between 28 July 2015 and 28 August 2015. Thirty five responses were received with 22 completed (that is, 13 respondents had one or more questions left unanswered). On average, 25 responses were received for each question.

Questionnaire structure

Questions are numbers Q1, Q2, etc. Two types of search activity were defined during design of the questionnaire, so a number of questions were repeated with respect to each type of search activity.

Section 1 of the questionnaire (Q1–4) relate to web searches where one wants to find a comprehensive list of all relevant results (e.g. literature search, data gathering), so completeness of results is the most important measure of success.

Section 2 of the questionnaire (Q5–8) relate to web searches where one is looking for the answer to a specific question, i.e. the relevance ranking of the results is the most important measure of success.

Section 3 (Q9–16) posed questions to assess respondents’ reception of semantic search features and their preferences in the implementation of such features.

Each question with results and analysis of each question is described in the relevant section below.