College and Research Libraries Research Notes Use of a Laser Videodisc System: Attitudes Sarah A. Kelly Twenty-six students enrolled in a course on swine production retrieved information from a laser videodisc containing the full text of the Pork Industry Handbook. The attitudes of these novice searchers were assessed before and after they used the laser videodisc system. The degree of expertise on computers appears re- lated to the initial attitude toward retrieving information from the laser videodisc system. However, neither expertise on computers nor initial attitudes determined success in using the system. A larger, though not significant, change in attitude was seen between those who were successful in using the system and those who were not. Although laser videodisc technology has been available since the early seven- ties, librarians have only recently used it for information retrieval. Since 1981, when Pergamon introduced its short- lived Patsearch, several commercial appli- cations of videodisc technology have be- come available. Major libraries including the National Library of Canada, the Na- tional Library of Medicine, the Library of Congress, and the National Agricultural Library have explored the capabilities of the laser videodisc. 1 This study concerns one group of users who helped evaluate the effectiveness of laser videodisc technology and other tech- nologies in retrieving information. In 1984 the National Agricultural Library (NAL) initiated the project in which these us~rs participated. The vehicle for the project was the full text of the Pork Industry Hand- book in three formats: hard copy, full text available online from a private file at Bib- liographic Retrieval Services, and full text on laser videodisc. The NAL project pro- vided an opportunity to study the atti- tudes of novice users toward the laser vi- deodisc system. In evaluating the usefulness of the laser videodisc or any other technology, how the user feels about the system is an im- portant consideration. How readily a po- tential user accepts and utilizes a new technology may depend upon the attitude toward it. At least some designers of com- puters and software are aware of this. Sarah A. Kelly is Assistant Life Sciences Librarian at Purdue University, West-lAfayette, Indiana 47907. 357 358 College & Research Libraries Since the midseventies the decrease in computer costs has stimulated interest in good human factors as a marketing tool.J Librarians also are aware of the impor- tance of user attitudes as factors in accept- ing new technologies. Noble and O'Con- nor studied the relationship between attitudes toward computer technology in general and acceptance and evaluation of the VTLS online public access catalog (OPAC) in particular. 4 Analysis of their data indicated ''that those who distrust and are suspicious of the computer tech- nology would have less use for OP AC in the future. " 5 Some studies have indicated that com- puter experience may condition attitudes toward computers. In studying the atti- tudes of four professional groups, Zoltan and Chapanis observed that those who had learned to use computers held a more favorable attitude toward them than those who had not. 6 Arndt, Feltes, and Hanak found that secretaries familiar with word- processing equipment felt more positive toward using it than those who had had no experience with it. 7 The objectives of this research were to examine (1) whether or not experience with computers affects attitudes toward the laser videodisc technology; (2) whether or not initial attitudes toward the laser videodisc system or experience on computers are related to user performance on the system; and (3) whether or not per- formance on the system is related to sub- sequent attitudes or increases in change of attitudes toward the technology. METHODOLOGY Twenty-six students enrolled in an eight-week class on swine production at Purdue University participated voluntar- ily in this study. A homogeneous group, all were farmers and all but one were un- der twenty-five years of age. The attitudes of the students toward retrieving informa- tion from the laser videodisc were mea- sured before and after using the system. The vehicle for measuring attitudes was a set of ten semantic differential scales (see Appendix A). A scale consists of an adjec- tive and its antonym with seven blanks in- serted between them. Scales for this study July 1988 were selected from a list by Henerson, Morriss, and Fitz-Gibbon. 8 A mean atti- tude score was computed over all items for each individual. The hardware of the system consists of an IBM PC-XT with 512 kilobytes of mem- ory with monitor and mono-adapter .card, a Pioneer LDV-1000 videodisc player, a Laser Data Trio 110 controller with inter- face card and a Panasonic 1R124 mono- chrome display monitor. The software is the PCIX operating system and BRS/ Search. The data stored on the videodisc was the full text, plus pictures and charts, of the Pork Industry Handbook, approximately two million characters. The Handbook is a major reference work for those involved in raising and selling swine. The searchable data (which includes all of the text, some of the charts, and all cap- tions for pictures and graphs) are dis- played on one monitor; the pictures, graph-s, and remaining charts are dis- played on the second monitor. BRS/ Search enables searching in three modes. The participants in this study used the mode for novice users. Called Search- mate, it is menu-driven and has help screens that can be called up during a search session. The user may combine search terms with positional AND/OR Boolean operators. After the documents are retrieved, the user has different op- tions for displaying them. Andre has de- scribed fully the creation, operation, and capabilities of this laser videodisc system. 9 Each participant spent no more than one-and-~-ha1£ hours learning about and using the system. After reading a one- page description about what he was going to do during the session, he filled out the attitude scales to indicate how he felt in anticipating use of the system. I demon- strated how to retrieve documents from the system and how to display them. I also indicated written instructions on the search process located beside the com- puter. After the demonstration the partici- pant was left to use the system on his own to find information on any topic he wished. After this period of exploration, I gave the student this question to answer: ''What are the space requirem~nts for boars in pasture?" The student had up to thirty minutes to find the answer, which was contained in a chart, and show it to me. In this study there were two measures of performance. The first was success in an- swering the question. (A participant ei- ther found the answer or did not. If during the search he asked for help, he was counted as not having answered the ques- tion.) The second measure was the amount of time elapsed between submis- sion of the question and discovery of the answer. After this part of the session, the student filled in the same set of attitude scales as he had before as a measure of his feeling toward using the laser videodisc system. Each student was asked what in- struction he had received in using com- puters and how many hours he used one. His experience using a computer was given the value of 1, 2, or 3, corresponding to a low, moderate, or high level. A stu- dent with no computer courses or with a course but no application was rated as Research Notes 359 having a low level of experience; one with multiple courses and no application or one course with minimal application was rated as having a moderate level of experience; one who used a computer on a regular ba- sis was rated as having a high level of ex- perience. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION A relationship does appear between us- ers' previous experience on computers and their initial attitudes toward using the laser videodisc system (see table 1). For this part of the study the data were com- plete for twenty-four of the twenty-six stu- dents. A simple regression analysis of this data 10 showed for three of the ten scales and for the mean score of all scales a signif- . icant difference between the attitudes of those who had had more experience and those who had had less. One might expect that familiarity with a computer would foster a positive attitude toward a system with a microcomputer as a major compo- nent. In studying the attitudes of certified TABLE 1 RELATIONSHIP OF PRIOR COMPUTER EXPERIENCE TO INITIAL A ffiTUDE TOWARD USING LASER VIDEODISC SYSTEM AS REPORTED IN PRETEST Semantic Differential A~usted Regression Scale R Sguare R guare Coefficent F p Boring/ .04127 -.00231 -.203145 .94697 .3411 interestin~ Uninformative/ informative .19005 .15324 -.435944 5.16222 .0332* Confusing/ clear .05643 .01354 -.237553 1.31574 .2637 Purposeless/ .00917 -.03587 -.095766 .20363 .6562 purposeful Tense/ relaxed .03797 -.00576 -.194861 .86833 .3615 Unhappy/ .33667 .30652 - .580233 11.16603 .0030* happy Angry/ .08269 -.350110 3 .07343 .0935 calm .12258 Worthless/ valuable .04112 -.00246 -.202783 .94346 .3419 Useless/ useful .26370 .23023 -.513514 7.87898 .0103* Unfriendly/ -.255164 1.53214 .2288 friendly .06511 .02261 Mean score of all scales .20382 .16763 -.451468 5.63206 .0268* Simple regression analysis of data used : y = a+ bx + e with initial attitude as y, the dependent variable, and prior computer experience as x, the independent variable . dfl /22 *p < .05 . 360 College & Research Libraries public accountants, lawyers, and physi- cians, Zoltan and Chapanis found that ex- perienced users were more likely to be positive toward computers than inexperi- enced users11 But in this study of attitudes toward the laser videodisc system those who had had more experience using a computer had less positive attitudes in an- ticipating their use of the system than those who had had less experience. It is possible that a study with more partici- pants would have had a different result. The number of students with the highest level of experience was four, and those with a moderate level was five. The attitudes users held initially toward using the system did not appear to be re- lated to their performance on the system. The data for this part of the study were complete for twenty-four of the students. One measure of performance was whether or not they were successful in an- swering the question. Eighteen (70 per- cent) of the twenty-six students did an- swer the question, although the July 1988 demonstration and exploration periods were brief, only one-half hour each. How- ever, from a simple regression analysis of the data no relationship appeared be- tween initially held attitudes and success in answering the question. The other measure of performance was the time it took to answer the question. According to a simple regression analysis of the data there appears to be no relation- ship between the initial attitudes of the us- ers and this measure. This is not unex- pected. Other factors probably affected this measure of performance. Five of the students mentioned that they did not know how to type. This may have in- creased their search time for an answer. One can also speculate that the ability to formulate and execute a search might be a significant factor in determining perfor- mance and might operate independently of attitude. This ability might also be inde- pendent of previous experience on com- puters. A simple regression analysis of the level of experience with computers in rela- TABLE2 Semantic Differential Scale Boring/ interestin~ U ninformahve/ informative Confusing/ clear Purposeless/ purposeful Tense/ relaxed Unhappy/ happy Angry/ calm Worthless/ valuable Useless/ useful Unfriendly/ friendly Mean score of all scales SUCCESS IN ANSWERING THE QUESTION USING LASER VIDEODISC SYSTEM RELATED TO CHANGE IN AITITUDE Not Successful Successful Mean Mean Difference in Scores n Difference in Scores .88 8 .56 18 .50 8 1.00 18 1.14 7 .67 18 .50 8 .56 18 .62 8 .83 18 .75 8 .82 17 .00 8 .56 18 .12 8 .44 18 .62 8 .72 18 -.12 8 .06 18 .50 7 .62 17 F p .4626 .5029 .7224 .4038 .3251 .5741 .0168 .8980 .0553 .8161 .0125 .9118 .7020 .4104 .5357 .4713 .0265 .8721 .1281 .7235 .0890 .7683 Analysis of variance used . Success in answering the question is the independent variable. Difference between posttest and pretest scores on attitude scales measures change of attitude, the dependent variable. df 1/24 except 1/23 for confusing/clear and mean score of all scales. tion to performance on the laser videodisc system indicated that experience did not appear to be related to success in answer- ing the question or the time required to an- swer the question. An analysis of variance revealed that for eight of the ten scales and for the mean of all scales those who were successful in an- swering the question showed a more posi- tive change in attitude than those who did not answer the question, where change in attitude is measured by subtracting the pretest response from the posttest re- sponse for each respondent on each scale. (see table 2). However, the change in atti- tude was not significant. CONCLUSION Because of the small number of students comprising the total number of partici- pants in this study and the even smaller number belonging to the subgroups, con- clusions drawn from the analysis of the data are tentative. This study indicates that previous experience on computers is related to initial attitudes toward the laser Research Notes 361 videodisc system, although not in the di- rection one might expect. It is not evident from this study that as more library users become computer users one can expect them to have favorable attitudes initially toward new technology involving com- puters. However, neither initial attitudes toward the system, nor previous experi- ence on computers appear to be related to how successful people are in using the system. These findings suggest that fac- tors other than initial attitudes or experi- ence with computers are more important in predicting success in using the laser vi- deodisc system. In this study typing abil- ity may have been a factor. Probably more important is knowing how to execute a search. One would hope that successful use of the system to retrieve information would encourage a positive attitude to- ward this technology. This cannot be con- cluded definitely from the data. However, those who were successful in answering the question did show a more positive change in attitude than those who were unsuccessful. REFERENCES 1. R. Duchesne and S. S. Sonnemann, Optical Disk Technology and the Library. Canadian Network Papers, no.9. (Ottawa: National Library of Canada, May 1985). 2. P. Q. J. Andre, "Evaluating Laser Videodisc Technology for the Dissemination of Agricultural Information," Information Technology and Libraries 4:139-47 Oune 1985). 3. B. R. Gaines, 'From Ergonomics to the Fifth Generation: 30 Years of Human-Computer Interac- tion Studies,'' in Human-/Computer Interaction: IFIP Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, ed . B. Shackel (London, Eng.,1984), p.3-7 (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1985). 4. G. Noble and S. O'Connor, "Attitudes toward Technology as Predictors of Online Catalog Us- age," College & Research 'Libraries 47:605-10 (Nov. 1986). 5. Ibid ., p .9. 6. E. Zoltan and A. Chapanis, "What Do Professional Persons Think about Computers?" Behaviour and Information Technology 1:55-68 (Jan.-Mar. 1982). 7. S. Arndt, J. Feltes, andJ. Hanak, ''Secretarial Attitudes towards Word Processors as a Function of Familiarity and Locus of Control," Behaviour and Information Technology 2:17-22 (Jan.-Mar. 1983). 8. M. E. Henerson, L. L. Morriss, and C. T. Fitz-Gibbon, "Developing Your Own Measures: Atti- tude Rating Scales," in How to Measure Attitudes, ed. M. E. Henerson, L. L. Morriss, and C. T. Fitz- Gibbon, (Beverly Hills: Sage Pub., 1978), p . 85-91 . 9. P. Q. J. Andre, "Full-Text Access and Laser Videodiscs: The National Agricultural Library Sys- tem," Library Hi Tech 4:13-21 (Spring 1986). 10. E. J. Pedhazur and F. N. Kerlinger, "Elements of Multiple Regression Analysis: Two Independent Variables," in Multiple Regression in Behavioral Research: Explanation and Prediction (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982), p.45. 11. Zoltan and Chapanis, "What do Professional," p.65. 362 College & Research Libraries July 1988 APPENDIX A: SEMANTIC DIFFERENTIAL SCALES PORK INDUSTRY HANDBOOK How do you feel about finding information using this system? Place an x on one of the seven lines between each pair of words. boring interesting uninformative informative confusing clear purposeless purposeful tense relaxed unhappy happy angry calm worthless valuable useless useful unfriendly friendly