Fenichel, C.H. (1981). Online searching: Measures that discriminate among users with different types of experiences. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 32, January, 23-32.

This article seeks to understand and identify the behaviors of users that are successful in searching online bibliographies, using the assumption that experienced searchers conduct more successful searches. The methodology used in this research was to take five groups of searchers ranging from novice to experienced and have them conduct searches in the ERIC database to determine what behaviors are associated with success. After conducting a series of tests, Fenichel was surprised to learn that there were an unexpectedly large amount of individual differences among the groups of searchers, and that although beginning searchers searched more slowly and made more typographical errors, they performed just as well as experienced searchers in precision.

The large individual differences found that there is a wide variety of ways in which subjects searched for the same question and that there was no consistency in search terms. Another unexpected result was the simplicity of searches. Even experienced users used very basic techniques to select and combine search terms and almost never took advantage of reviewing or modifying retrieved sources after making a search. These findings suggest that online systems are being used in a more simple way than assumed and that people search in a very straightforward manner. Ultimately, Fenchel maintains a view that experienced searchers still have considerable need for improvement in searching and that problems searching are dependent on search strategy and not necessarily the mechanics of the system.