Strangers in a Strange Land: A Study of Second Language Speakers Searching for e-Services

While the recent trend of digitisation of government and related services offers many advantages, it could introduce problems for those who are less information literate or who have particular issues searching for and understanding the necessary content. In this study ten participants, who speak English as a foreign language, were given four search tasks designed to reflect actual information seeking situations. They completed pre- and post-search questionnaires to identify the relevance of the task, their English language ability and search experience. Our results suggest that, despite a perception that they performed to the best of their abilities, were bookmarking relevant documents and that the given tasks were easy, the students were actually often choosing documents that are only partially or tangentially relevant. The repercussions of this discrepancy are clear and suggest that much more assistance is needed before such services can be made 'digital by default'.