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<Paper uid="W06-2806">
  <Title>Interpreting Genre Evolution on the Web: Preliminary Results</Title>
  <Section position="4" start_page="34" end_page="35" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
3 Web Study
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> The study described in this section was webbased. It was uploaded on to one of the servers at University of Brighton at the end of February 2005, and kept online for one month.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> The study is based on participants who volunteered within the University of Brighton (UK), University of Sussex (UK), Dalhousie</Paragraph>
    <Section position="1" start_page="34" end_page="34" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
University (Canada), Syracuse University
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> (USA), plus other academics (interested in genre-related issues) in other universities and research institutes in Europe. Potential participants were sent an email containing the URL of the study on the web.</Paragraph>
    </Section>
    <Section position="2" start_page="34" end_page="34" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
3.1 Population and Sample: Academic
Environment
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> Genre recognition and acknowledgement is based on elements like education, culture, community, and society. The academic population on which the study is built upon has</Paragraph>
    </Section>
    <Section position="3" start_page="34" end_page="34" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
3.2 Web Pages and Web Genres
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> Web pages were chosen by the author of this paper from the live Web and from the SPIRIT collection of web pages (Joho and Sanderson, 2004). Three typologies of web genres and web pages were hypothesized for the selection and for the study (the web pages included in the study are available, together with their URLs, at http://www.nltg.brighton.ac.uk/home/Marina.Santini/:  1) Easy web genres: 1. eshop (web_page_01) 2. personal home page (web_page_02) 3. front page (web_page_04) 4. search page (web_page_05) 5. corporate home page (web_page_11) 6. FAQs (web_page_12, the word &amp;quot;FAQs&amp;quot; was deleted from the heading) 7. splash screen (web_page_24) 8. net ad (web_page_2) 2) Ambiguous web genres: 9. email (web_page_03, because of the format and the granularity: email vs.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1"> mailing list) 10. sitemap (web_page_06, the words &amp;quot;sitemap&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;hotlist&amp;quot; were deleted from the heading) 11. hotlist (web_page_15,the word &amp;quot;hotlist&amp;quot; was deleted from the heading), 12. academic personal home page (web_page_08) 13. about page (web_page_10) 14. organizational home page (web_page_14) 15. blog (web_page_07) 16. clog (web_page_16,blog and clog could be swapped in their interpretation) 17. search by multiple fields (web_page_17) 18. online form (web_page_10, online forms and search by multiple field can appear very similar) 19. newsletter (web_page_19, which was presented truncated), 20. howto page (web_page_20) 21. online tutorial (web_page_22, online tutorial is a super-genre of howto pages) 3) Difficult web pages: 22. ezine cover (web_page_13) 23. &amp;quot;Adirondack Orienteering Klub&amp;quot; (web_page_18, the author could not find a genre for it) 24. CitiDex (web_page_21, the author could not find a genre for it) 25. Collimating Lens Holder (web_page_23, the author could not find a genre for it)  The expectation was that easy web genres would collect the highest rate of agreement, ambiguous web genres would receive a lower agreement rate, while difficult web pages were expected to be the most controversial in users' perception. The term &amp;quot;genre&amp;quot; was never mentioned in the whole study in order not to influence or confuse the participants. The goal of the study was not declared either because the idea was to ask for a genre classification of web pages implicitly and study the reactions. Participants were simply told to assign &amp;quot;labels&amp;quot; to web page &amp;quot;types&amp;quot;.</Paragraph>
    </Section>
    <Section position="4" start_page="34" end_page="35" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
3.3 Participants' Task and Sample Size
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> The task of participants was straightforward.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1"> They had to go through 25 screenshots of web pages and assign one of the 23 labels to each of them.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="2"> The total number of users who started the experiment was 198. 135 participants went  through the whole study and provided valid responses for the experiment.</Paragraph>
    </Section>
  </Section>
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