Finding Governmental Statistical Data on the Web: Three Empirical Studies of the FedStats Topics Page

Governmental agencies provide statistical data on their web sites. These large collections of data need appropriate interfaces that would guide the general public, as well as the researchers, to easily and successfully find information they seek. This paper summarizes the results of three empirical studies with 15 users in each group of the FedStats Topics web page. The evolution from 645 alphabetically organized links, to 549 categorically organized links, to 215 categorically organized links tied to portal pages produced a steady rise in successful task completion from 15 % to 28 % to 42%. User satisfaction also increased. We make recommendations based on these data and our observations of users.