An evaluation of enhancing social tagging with a knowledge organization system

PurposeTraditional subject indexing and classification are considered infeasible in many digital collections. This paper seeks to investigate ways of enhancing social tagging via knowledge organization systems, with a view to improving the quality of tags for increased information discovery and retrieval performance.Design/methodology/approachEnhanced tagging interfaces were developed for exemplar online repositories, and trials were undertaken with author and reader groups to evaluate the effectiveness of tagging augmented with control vocabulary for subject indexing of papers in online repositories.FindingsThe results showed that using a knowledge organisation system to augment tagging does appear to increase the effectiveness of non‐specialist users (that is, without information science training) in subject indexing.Research limitations/implicationsWhile limited by the size and scope of the trials undertaken, these results do point to the usefulness of a mixed approach in supporting the subject indexing of online resources.Originality/valueThe value of this work is as a guide to future developments in the practical support for resource indexing in online repositories.

Partial Word Knowledge and Vocabulary Growth during Reading Comprehension

The experiment investigated the development of vocabulary knowledge in elementary school children as a function of story reading for partially known and unknown words. Fourth graders participated in a vocabulary checklist in which they provided definitions or sentences for words they knew (known words) and checked off words they did not know the meaning of but were familiar with (partially known words). Children then read stories containing some of these words. The remaining words served as a control. Vocabulary growth was small but even for both partially known and unknown words. However, the characteristics of the words being learned themselves (particularly, part of speech and concreteness) were more important in determining this growth than aspects of the texts.

Behavior and Parental Expectations of Child Pedestrians

Pedestrian injuries remain the most common cause of death from trauma for young school-age children. This study was based on the hypothesis that parents' abilities to accurately assess their children's street-crossing skills vary with the crossing test and age of the children, being less accurate for younger children. Children at three developmental levels (aged 5 through 6, 7 through 8, and 9 through 10 years) and their parents were evaluated on four street-crossing tests and a control vocabulary test. For each test, children's answers were compared to parents' estimates of their children's performance. Parents overestimated the abilities of their 5- through 6-year-olds on all four tests (P < .01). Parents overestimated the abilities of 7- through 8-year-olds on two of the tests (P < .05) and parents accurately assessed the abilities of the 9- through 10-year-olds. On the vocabulary test, parents overestimated their children's performance at all age levels (P < .01). The results support the hypothesis and indicate that parents' expectations for their children's pedestrian skills are least accurate for 5- and 6-year-olds, with the mismatch decreasing as children get older. Inaccurate expectations of children's pedestrian skills may be a fruitful target for injury prevention programs.