• Journal of the Korean Society for information Management
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.265-284
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• 2001

The aim of this study was to discover the correlation between users cognitive style and their attitude towards evaluating the system. Postgraduate students cognitive styles were defined as Verbaliser/Imager and Wholist/Analytic, and the functionality and ease of learning features of a Web-based OPAC(Online Public Access Catalogue) system were evaluated using a combined evaluation methods: interviews for the preliminary survey, a questionnaire far the central data collection, and a psychometric approach for the judgement of students cognitive style using Ridings CSA(Cognitive Style Assessment) tool. Forty-four postgraduate student volunteers responded and data was analysed using SPSS(Statistical Package for Social Science) for Windows. The statistical analysis of each feature of the evaluation, the correlation between the variables, and the features were explored using Pearsons correlation coefficients(r). In exploring the effects of the cognitive styles of individuals, this study has failed to reveal a significant (P < 0.05) correlations in the interactive Web-based OPACs evaluation. It could be said that the contribution of cognitive styles to evaluating Web-based OPACs is likely to be weaker than that of non-cognitive (or demographic) variables.