Query recommendation for children

by Sergio Duarte Torres, Djoerd Hiemstra, Ingmar Weber, Pavel Serdyukov. 

One of the biggest problems that children experience while searching the web occurs during the query formulation process. Children have been found to struggle formulating queries based on keywords given their limited vocabulary and their difficulty to choose the right keywords.
In this work we propose a method that utilizes tags from social media to suggest queries related to children topics. Concretely we propose a simple yet effective approach to bias a random walk defined on a bipartite graph of web resources and tags through keywords that are more commonly used to describe resources for children. We evaluate our method using a large query log sample of queries aimed at retrieving information for children. We show that our method outperforms query suggestions of state-of-the-art search engines and state-of-the art query suggestions based on random walks.
Read the paper.

EmSe: initial evaluation of a child-friendly medical search system

by The PuppyIR team.

When undergoing medical treatment in combination with extended stays in hospitals, children have been frequently found to develop an interest in their condition and the course of treatment. A natural means of searching for related information would be to use a web search engine. The medical domain, however, imposes several key challenges on young and inexperienced searchers, such as difficult terminology, potentially frightening topics or non-objective information offered by lobbyists or pharmaceutical companies. To address these problems, we present the design and usability study of EmSe, a search service for children in a hospital environment. Read the paper.