Research on how the Internet is diffusing across the population has broadened from questions about who uses the medium to what people do during their time online. With this change in focus comes a need for more detailed data on people’s online actions. The author provides a method for coding and classifying users’ online information-seeking behavior. The author presents an exhaustive list of ways in which a user may arrive at a web page. The proposed methodology includes enough nuanced information to distinguish among different search actions and links. In its entirety, the coding scheme makes it possible to understand many details about the users’ sequence of actions simply by looking at the spreadsheet containing the information proposed in this article. The author also demonstrates the utility of this scheme with findings from a study on the information-seeking behavior of 100 randomly selected Internet users to exemplify the utility of this coding and classification scheme.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Anigbogu, J., & Rice, R. E. (2001). Expectations and experiences of seeking infertility information via the Internet and the telephone directory. In R. E. Rice & J. E. Katz (Eds.), The Internet and health communication: Experiences and expectations (p. 459). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
2.
Bell, H., & Tang, N. K. H. (1998). The effectiveness of commercial Internet web sites: Auser’s perspective. Internet Research, 8(3), 219-228.
3.
Catledge, L. D., & Pitkow, J. E. (1995, April 10-14). Characterizing browsing strategies in the World Wide Web. Paper presented at the third International World Wide Web Conference, Darmstadt, Germany.
4.
Cockburn, A., Greenberg, S., Jones, S., McKenzie, B., & Moyle, M. (2003). Improving web page revisitation: Analysis, design and evaluation. IT and Society, 1(3), 159-183.
5.
Goldfarb, A. (2002). Analyzing website choice using clickstream data. In M. Baye (Ed.), Advances in applied microeconomics v.11: The economics of the Internet and e-commerce (pp. 209-230). New York: Elsevier.
6.
Greenberg, S., & Cockburn, C. (1999, June 3). Getting back to back: Alternate behaviors for a web browser’s Back button. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the fifth annual Human Factors and the Web Conference, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD.
7.
Hargittai, E. (2002). Beyond logs and surveys: In-depth measures of people’s web-use skills. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology Perspectives, 53(14), 1239-1244.
8.
Hargittai, E. (2003a). The digital divide and what to do about it. In D. C. Jones (Ed.), The new economy handbook. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
9.
Hargittai, E. (2003b). How wide a web? Inequalities in accessing information online. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ.
10.
Hargittai, E. (2004). The changing online landscape: From free-for-all to commercial gatekeeping. In P. Day & D. S. Day (Eds.), Community practice in the network society: Local action/global interaction. Boston: Routledge Kegan Paul.
11.
Howard, P. E. N., & Jones, S. (2003). Society online. Thousand Oaks, CA. Sage.
12.
Huberman, B. A., Pirolli, P. L., Pitkow, J. E., & Lukose, R. M. (1998). Strong regularities in World Wide Web surfing. Science, 280(5360), 94-97.
13.
Jarvenpaa, S. L., & Todd, P. A. (1996). Consumer reactions to electronic shopping on the World Wide Web. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 1(2), 59-88.
14.
Katz, J. E., & Rice, R. E. (2002). Social consequences of Internet use: Access, involvement and interaction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
15.
Moe, W. W. (2003). Buying, searching, or browsing: Differentiating between online shoppers using in-store navigational clickstream. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 13(1&2), 29-40.
16.
Montgomery, A. (2003). Predicting online purchase conversion using web path analysis (GSIA Working Paper no. 2003-E26). Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon University.
17.
National Telecommunications and Information Administration. (2002). A nation online. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
18.
Novak, T. P., Hoffman, D. L., & Yung, Y. -F. (2000). Measuring the customer experience in online environments: A structural modeling approach. Marketing Science, 19(1), 22-42.
19.
Rice, R. E., McCreadie, M., & Chang, S. -J. L. (2001). Accessing and browsing information and communications. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
20.
Shneiderman, B., Lazar, J., & Melody, I. (2003). Introduction: Web navigation. IT & Society, 1(3), i-vii.
21.
Shum, S. B., & McKnight, C. (1997). World Wide Web usability: Introduction to this special issue. International Journal of Human Computer Studies, 47(1), 1-4.
22.
Spink, A., Jansen, B. J., Wolfram, D., & Saracevic, T. (2002). From e-sex to e-commerce: Web search changes. IEEE Computer, 35(3), 107-109.
23.
Spink, A., Wolfram, D., & Jansen, M. B. J. (2001). Searching the web: The public and their queries. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 52(3), 226-234.
24.
Wang, P., Hawk, W. B., & Tenopir, C. (2000). Users’ interaction with World Wide Web resources: An exploratory study using a holistic approach. Information Processing and Management, 36, 229-251.
25.
Wellman, B., & Haythornthwaite, C. (2002). The Internet in everyday life. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
26.
Wildemuth, B. M. (2002). Effective methods for studying information seeking and use. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 53(12), 1218-1222.
