Journal of Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences (May 2024)
Presenting a Model in the Analysis of the Database Interface Environment in Support of Users\' Information-Seeking Behavior
Abstract
Background and purpose: User interface environments of databases should be designed in such a way that, in addition to facilitating users' information-seeking behavior, they can provide appropriate strategies to solve their problems in the shortest possible time. The user interface allows users to get a proper understanding of the information base and they can take advantage of it. The closer the design of the user interface is to the mental patterns and information-seeking behavior of the users, the more effective and useful it is and the less the user's efforts. Despite the development of medical information technology in the field of user interface design, most medical information systems have not been able to meet users' expectations mainly due to: a lack of awareness of information needs, information behavior of users, and lack of understanding of its nature. This research aims to present a new model for effective information retrieval and increasing the desirability in the design of user interface environments of information databases. Materials and methods: This study is a mixed type with a quantitative and qualitative approach which has been done with the design of combined exploratory methods. In the qualitative part, the research community included expert professors and specialists, and in the quantitative part, specialized and research-oriented PhD students of the basic science fields of Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences. In the qualitative part, 12 people were included in the study with the purposeful sampling method, and with this number of interviews, information saturation occurred. In the quantitative part, stratified random sampling was used and 100 people were included in the study. The required data was collected through content analysis and researcher-developed questionnaires. The data was then analyzed using SPSS software version 22 and inferential statistics (Kolmogorov-Smirnov, Wilcoxon, Mann-Whitney, and structural analysis). Results: According to the IPMA analysis, the findings of the research showed that among the variables that explain the desirable information-seeking behavior in terms of importance, the highest rank in desirable information-seeking behaviors is related to the dimension of users' position with an emphasis on ability (with a significance coefficient of 0.437 and the lowest is related to the ease of access component (with a significance coefficient of 0.048) and in terms of performance, the highest rating is related to the user interface design dimension with an emphasis on the database efficiency variable (with a performance factor of 57.191) and the lowest was related to the ease component (with a performance factor of 40.793). Also, the proposed model was able to obtain the necessary validity and reliability. Conclusion: The presented model helps users of database user interface environments so that they can use the basic elements as much as possible to speed up work and save time. Also, the proposed model can provide the necessary ideas to the designers of database environments so that they can implement the appropriate features for better interaction with the databases to facilitate and understand as easily as possible for more users. considering that the proposed model has obtained the necessary validity and reliability, it can be claimed that this model will not only be able to answer the issues raised in the field of searching and retrieving information, but it can be used, criticized, and perfected in future researches as a basis for designing and implementing user interface environments.
