Children's search roles at home: Implications for designers, researchers, educators, and parents

• Published in: Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 2012-03, Vol.63 (3), p.558-573
• Main Authors: Foss, Elizabeth, Druin, Allison, Brewer, Robin, Lo, Phillip, Sanchez, Luis, Golub, Evan, Hutchinson, Hilary
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Children; Children & youth; Designers; Exact sciences and technology; Information and communication sciences; Information science; Information science. Documentation; Information seeking behaviour; Internet; Library and information science. General aspects; Parent-child relations; Parents; Qualitative research; Sciences and techniques of general use; Search engines; Searching; Studies; Trends; Use and user studies. Information needs; User behavior
• ISSN: 1532-2882; 2330-1635; 1532-2890; 2330-1643
• DOI: 10.1002/asi.21700

This paper presents the results of a large‐scale, qualitative study conducted in the homes of children aged 7, 9, and 11 investigating internet searching processes on Google. Seven search roles, representing distinct behavior patterns displayed by children when interacting with the Google search engine, are described, including Developing Searchers, Domain‐specific Searchers, Power Searchers, Nonmotivated Searchers, Distracted Searchers, Rule‐bound Searchers, and Visual Searchers. Other trends are described and selected to present a view of the whole child searcher. These roles and trends are used to make recommendations to designers, researchers, educators, and parents about the directions to take when considering how to best aid children to become search literate.