What does time spent on searching indicate?

In this paper, we report a comparative study on what users’ time spent on searching for information is an indication of. Time spent is commonly interpreted as an implicit measure of interest, but might indeed describe other circumstances of the information retrieval (IR) interaction. This phenomenon of time spent is interesting from an IR evaluation point of view with reference to how time spent is to be interpreted. A comparison of time spent between a semi-lab interactive IR (IIR) study using simulated work task situations and a naturalistic IIR study is presented. The findings of this comparison are further related to a study on information searching and seeking in the real work environment that provides a resonance board for the reported IIR studies. The main conclusion is that time spent searching depends not only on interest, but also on circumstances such as prior knowledge and external requirements.