Children and Search Tools: Evaluation Remains Unclear

As children search the internet for materials, they often turn to search engines that, unfortunately, offer children little support as they formulate queries to initiate the search process or examine resources for relevance. While some solutions have been proposed to address this, inherent to this issue is the need to evaluate the effectiveness of these solutions. We posit that the evaluation of the diverse aspects involved in the search process – from query suggestion generation to resource retrieval – requires a complex, multi-faceted approach that draws on evaluation methods utilized in human-computer interaction, information retrieval, natural language processing, education, and psychology.