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Online search stopping behaviors: An investigation of query abandonment and task stopping

The goal of the study is to understand the factors that influence people’s search stopping behaviors during online information search. Past research on search stopping behavior has primarily focused on the stopping behavior that takes place at the conclusion of an information-seeking task. However, in this study we focus on two types of stopping behaviors that take place during information search tasks: query abandonment, or the point at which a person decides to stop his/her current query and enter a new one, and task stopping, or the point at which a person decides to stop the search task. A laboratory study was conducted with 48 participants who were asked to complete a set of six assigned search tasks and were interviewed about their experiences and search strategies after search. Results show that participants made query abandonment decisions based on the properties of search results, of queries and of search tasks. Their decisions to stop a task were influenced by the content they had examined, the goal they wished to achieve, the subjective perceptions they felt, and the study constraints they faced.