Effects of Role Sharing in Cooperative Information Retrieval Tasks.
Marika Imazu (AY 2010)
In recent years, the development of information technology, such as Twitter and smartphones, has made it possible to communicate more and more easily. People frequently exchange and share various information using such tools. Cooperative information retrieval is performed by a group of people who share a common purpose, such as problem solving, learning, or work activities. In general, we tend to think that cooperative work produces better results than a set of isolated tasks. However, the quality of the group work may be lower than that of a single individual. This is partly due to social loafing. On the other hand, role-sharing has been proposed to improve the efficiency of cooperative work, but its effect on cooperative information retrieval is not well understood. Therefore, in this study, we considered that role-sharing would clarify the goal of each member, which would lead to the reduction of Social Loafing and improve the efficiency of cooperative information retrieval. We tested two hypotheses: H1: role sharing increases the efficiency of cooperative information retrieval, and H2: role sharing decreases Social Loafing.
To test H1, we analyzed the amount of individual work, such as the number of pages viewed, and the quality of the plan, such as the rate of itinerary confirmation. We also looked at the effect of the division of roles based on the number and level of discourse between the two. We then analyzed the subjects' attitudes by asking them to write freely in a questionnaire, and to validate H2, we analyzed by interpersonal trust scale and compared the individual workloads.
The results of the experiment showed that in H1, the role-sharing group was more time-conscious and more feasible, and was able to produce a written plan with less search work, indicating that the role-sharing effect increased the efficiency of cooperative information retrieval. The total number of talks and the number of advanced level talks in the role-shared group were also higher, indicating that role-sharing facilitated communication. It is thought that the increased number of discourse resulted in a greater exchange and sharing of information about the work. Furthermore, the analysis of subjective evaluations showed that the group with assigned roles was more aware of their respective roles, indicating a goal clarification effect. However, when the individual workloads of the non-role-sharing group were compared within pairs, there was a tendency toward polarization between those who worked more and those who worked less. It is possible that these could be the effects of Social Loafing.
This study shows that role-sharing has the effect of raising the level of discourse and increasing the efficiency of cooperative information retrieval. We would like to further develop methods to reduce Social Loafing in the future. Furthermore, we would like to pursue the cause of the difference in workload among groups without role assignment. In addition, it is necessary to conduct research on the effects of role sharing in groups of three or more people.
(Translated by DeepL)