Dr. Overbey has conducted a quantitative and
qualitative study of how adult professionals verify
web-based information. To date, research on web use
consists of descriptive reports and prescriptive
approaches. What''s missing are descriptive reports
that offer potential prescriptive value. This
project addresses this gap by way of a survey study
and three think-aloud protocols. Survey results
show statistical significance in correlations
between the kinds of strategies used for verifying
web-based information and participants'' demographic
characteristics. These results provide a
theoretical rationale for selecting think-aloud
protocol participants. Protocol results show that
participants'' approaches to verifying web-based
information match up with some combination of
prescriptive approaches, which demonstrates
how and in what contexts these approaches become
operational. Finally, data show that participants''
information recall as they review web-based
information plays a vital role in their ability to
make credibility assessments of this information, a
finding that illustrates the benefits of studying
web use in real time.
qualitative study of how adult professionals verify
web-based information. To date, research on web use
consists of descriptive reports and prescriptive
approaches. What''s missing are descriptive reports
that offer potential prescriptive value. This
project addresses this gap by way of a survey study
and three think-aloud protocols. Survey results
show statistical significance in correlations
between the kinds of strategies used for verifying
web-based information and participants'' demographic
characteristics. These results provide a
theoretical rationale for selecting think-aloud
protocol participants. Protocol results show that
participants'' approaches to verifying web-based
information match up with some combination of
prescriptive approaches, which demonstrates
how and in what contexts these approaches become
operational. Finally, data show that participants''
information recall as they review web-based
information plays a vital role in their ability to
make credibility assessments of this information, a
finding that illustrates the benefits of studying
web use in real time.