Search Strategies and the Relevance of Retrieved Information in Persian Articles Database: Survey of M.A Students of Shiraz University

Retrieving relevant information on the Internet and identifying the related information to the real needs are not an easy task for many users. So the main objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of search strategies on the relevance of retrieved information in domestic article databases. Considering the nature of the subject, this was an applied descriptive-survey research. Statistical population consists of all domestic article databases, from which the MAGIRAN, IRANDOC, NOORMAGZ and the Regional Information Center for Science and Technology (RICeST) were selected as samples. To test the hypotheses, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Tukey’s post-hoc test were computed using SPSS statistical software version 22. The study’s findings showed that there were significant differences between relevance of the information retrieved from different databases based on different search strategies. It was found that, using simple search had the highest relevance. Moreover, using the AND, NOT and OR operators, took the lower ranks respectively. Using the time limiter had the lowest relevance in information retrieval. There were also significant differences between the relevance of information retrieved from different databases, and the NOORMAGZ database, the RICeST, MAGIRAN and IRANDOC; respectively had the most relevant retrievals. Using different search strategies can affect the relevance of the information retrieved from an article database. Therefore, acquiring these strategies and using each one in the right situation can improve the relevance of the retrieved information.