Notes

Outline

Understanding Statistical Concepts and Terms in Context: The GovStat Ontology and the Statistical Interactive Glossary Stephanie W. Haas, Maria Cristina Pattuelli,  Ron T. Brown, Jesse Wilbur School of Information and Library Science University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill {haas, browr, pattm}@ils.unc.edu, jdwilbur@email.unc.edu http://ils.unc.edu/govstat Supported by NSF grant EIA 0131824

The GovStat Project Find what you need, understand what you find Government statistical agencies are a rich source of information, but many barriers  to their use, especially by non-experts, exist. Statistical Knowledge Network integrate information across agency boundaries provide alternate means of finding and viewing information provide help when, where, and how it is most useful

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Barriers to Using Statistical Information Lack of statistical knowledge leads to difficulties: searching recognizing relevant statistics choosing the most appropriate statistics understanding what is presented using and interpreting the information

Examples from Metadata User Study Why are there so many numbers for employment and unemployment?  Does it matter which I use? The table lists mean and median income – which number is right? I’ll use the seasonally unadjusted number, because I just want one number, not a set for each season of the year. The “E” means it’s an estimate – they don’t know the real number. Can I compare a seasonally adjusted number to an unadjusted number?

Basic Principles User’s purpose is to find information, not learn more about statistics Seeking help shouldn’t mean abandoning the task Help should be integrated as seamlessly as possible into the statistical resources

Design Guidelines for SIG and the GovStat Ontology Limited coverage of concept and terms Intended for “everyday users”, not experts Provide explanations in variety of forms Explanations must be attractive Explanations should be coordinated with content – context specificity

SIG Framework

Terms Frequently encountered terms Basic level of statistical literacy Strategies for term identification examination of frequently-visited pages anecdotal evidence from agency and non-agency consultants metadata user study web crawl of agency sites

Content Basic level of explanation Variety of delivery “packages” definition, example brief tutorial, demonstration interactive simulation combination May incorporate related terms and concepts May point to more advanced resources

Content Outline

Context Specificity Incorporate explanations in user’s work context table- or statistic-specific, e.g., CPI, death rate, gasoline prices, etc. agency- or concept-specific, incorporating relevant entities, e.g., employment, benefits, height and weight, etc. general, universal context

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User Control Minimal interruption to user’s task Inform user that help is available for a term Allow user to select help presentation(s) Allow user to control action start, stop, repeat, supply values, etc. Allow user to explore related terms (ontology)

GovStat Ontology Scope of glossary plus connecting concepts and relationships Taxonomic relationships support provision of context-specific or more general explanations concept explanation templates Domain relationships support combining related concepts in explanation integration business rules

Future Directions Evaluation of ontology and SIG User exploration of statistical concepts and terms in ontology Connections to GovStat Metadata Model Services for information integration business rules Extending context-specific help domain terms for statistical agencies other arenas

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