Non-expert guidance beats the experts in this study

The March, 2008 issue of Communications of the ACM has some fascinating articles, one of which I mentioned in my previous post. Another one is “Peer-based Computer-supported Knowledge Refinement: An Empirical Investigation” by Kwangsu Cho, Tingting Rachel Chung, William R. King, and Christian Schunn.

The study demonstrated that peer-based knowledge refinement (for example, a product blog or forum where users can share tips and tricks, and peers provide feedback and refinement) can be more effective in delivering useful content than a knowledge base created by product experts. Here’s a portion of the authors’ conclusions:

“The results show that, as we hypothesized, the knowledge “distance” between experts and nonexperts impaired expert-based knowledge-refinement, while the close knowledge distance among peers facilitated knowledge refinement.
Considering that the work of experts is rarely done without time constraints, expert-based knowledge refinement may be worse. Experts under time pressure often default to such typical expert behaviors as using fewer cues than nonexperts to build task representations. They exhibit these behaviors by activating existing task schemata in memory. By relying more on their expert instincts under time pressure, experts may be less likely to take the time to consider the nonexpert’s perspective.”

Subscription to this journal is a benefit of ACM membership. I’ve been a member since last year and highly recommend it.