Relevance Versus Big Numbers: Students' Criteria for Selecting Scholarly References Online

This study examined the effect of the number of citations attributed to documents on third year psychology students' selection of bibliographical references. Our main assumption was that students would take high numbers of citations as accessible relevance cues and use them heuristically to fac...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Journal of experimental psychology. Applied 2018-12, Vol.24 (4), p.476-489
Main Authors:	Rouet, Jean-François, Skov, Ole, De Pereyra, Guillaume, Ros, Christine, Le Bigot, Ludovic, Vibert, Nicolas
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	Adolescent Adult Bibliography as Topic Cognitive science College Students Computer Searching Decision Making Familiarity Female Heuristics Human Humans Knowledge Male Middle Aged Number Comprehension Popularity Psychology Semantics Students Test Construction Visual Tracking Young Adult
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Summary:	This study examined the effect of the number of citations attributed to documents on third year psychology students' selection of bibliographical references. Our main assumption was that students would take high numbers of citations as accessible relevance cues and use them heuristically to facilitate decision making, potentially bypassing deeper relevance assessment based on semantic processing. Experiment 1 presented the students with a reference selection task while manipulating the number of citations attributed to references, and found that the number of citations had a strong impact on reference selection. Moreover, the effect was independent from topic familiarity and even from students' prior knowledge of what the number of citations meant. Experiment 2 used eye-tracking data to show that this "big number" effect was contingent upon the participants fixating the numbers of citations attributed to documents. Experiment 3 manipulated the semantic relevance of references to the search topic, and demonstrated that the less relevant references were 3 times more likely to be selected when they came with a high number of citations. Overall, the study shows that the number of citations significantly influences students' selections, competing with the semantic relevance of references. Implications for the teaching of online search skills are discussed. Public Significance Statement Students' selections of scholarly publications are strongly influenced by the number of times a publication got cited in other publications, even though many students struggle to explain what the figure means. The "big number" influence can even affect the students' perception of the relevance of the document. These findings warrant an effort to strengthen students' online search skills as part of undergraduate curricula.
ISSN:	1076-898X 1939-2192