Abstract
This study examined the performance and preference of individuals searching for information presented within search results that were displayed in either mostly paging or mostly scrolling formats. The conditions were: ten links per page at ten pages, fifty links per page at two pages, and one hundred-links on one page. Overall, the fifty-link condition had the fastest search time and was the most preferred. Users perceived that the hundred-link condition was more difficult to find information, presented too many choices, and looked less professional than the ten-link condition. The results suggest that a moderate amount of paging and scrolling was optimal. However, when forced to choose between the two, users preferred paging, even though paging took more time to find information than did scrolling.
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