Carnegie Mellon University
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Jamie Slomka

Adviser: Daniel Oppenheimer
Majors: Policy and Management; Decision Science
Minors: French and Francophone Studies; Politics and Public Policy

Information Search in the Age of Internet Literacy

Jamie Slomka’s project aims to answer the question: How do we search for information? Nowadays, it seems we hold all the knowledge of the world at our fingertips. All of the questions we ponder we should be able to answer with a quick trip to the nearest search engine. However, there exists a disparity between individuals in the ability to effectively search for information online. There exists a consensus about general G as a measure of intelligence, but we currently have no metric to assess people’s capability to search for information to answer a question or prompt. The goal of this project is to develop an assessment instrument to test people’s ability to search for information effectively and efficiently and to recommend strategies to improve information search.

Bio

In the course of study for her majors, Slomka has learned the necessary research and modeling skills required to develop a psychometric instrument for this project. She was first introduced to measures of intelligence in Professor Oppenheimer’s Human Intelligence & Human Stupidity class and has since been interested in these types of metrics. Later during her time in the Washington Semester Program, Slomka interned in the Office of Senator Cory Booker where she spent time researching foundational data for bill proposals. Her experiences inspired her project on assessing and improving people’s strategies of searching for information.