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German Youth Institute (DJI) study on the information-seeking behavior of children on the Internet

Published on: 11.01.13
Source: Deutsches Jugendinstitut

The use of child search engines claims to be learnt!

It is an educational concern with a view to the child media protection, that particularly children aged between six and twelve years use protected surfing spaces. The DJI study on information-seeking behavior of six- to thirteen-year-old children dealing with child search engines shows how closely the research and information literacy of the children - and therefore also her research success - are linked with their language skills, that means their linguistic development status, and that special search engines for children can improve their usability through functioning spell checking programs, suggestions for search items and an optimised index. After all, another result of the study: most of the children indeed know child search engines, but they use them little.

For the study, DJI scientist and project leader Dr. Christine Feil analysed the log files of the German child search engine provider "Blinde Kuh", "fragFINN" and "Helles Köpfchen" which registered in total about three million entries, including 600,000 search queries of the children sent through the central field to search. In addition, the children were asked about their user behavior.

The study is only available in German. For more information in German klick here.