PubMed Searches by Dutch-Speaking Nursing Students: The Impact of Language and System Experience Klaar Vanopstal Faculty of Translation Studies, University College Ghent, Ghent, Belgium. E-mail: klaar.vanopstal@hogent.be Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium. E-mail: klaar.vanopstal@ugent.be Robert Vander Stichele Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Heymans Institute of Pharmacology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium. E-mail: robert.vanderstichele@ugent.be Godelieve Laureys Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, Department of Nordic Studies, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium. E-mail: godelieve.laureys@ugent.be Joost Buysschaert Faculty of Translation Studies, University College Ghent, Ghent, Belgium. E-mail: joost.buysschaert@hogent.be This study analyzes the search behavior of Dutch- speaking nursing students with a nonnative knowledge of English who searched for information in MEDLINE/ PubMed about a specific theme in nursing. We examine whether and to what extent their search efficiency is affected by their language skills. Our task-oriented approach focuses on three stages of the information retrieval process: need articulation, query formulation, and relevance judgment. The test participants completed a pretest questionnaire, which gave us information about their overall experience with the search system and their self-reported computer and language skills. The stu- dents were briefly introduced to the use of PubMed and MeSH (medical subject headings) before they conducted their keyword-driven subject search. We assessed the search results in terms of recall and precision, and also analyzed the search process. After the search task, a satisfaction survey and a language test were completed. We conclude that language skills have an impact on the search results. We hypothesize that language support might improve the efficiency of searches conducted by Dutch-speaking users of PubMed. Introduction The growing amount of information makes it para- doxically difficult to stay abreast of current developments in the biomedical domain and to search for informa- tion selectively, even with the help of biomedical biblio- graphic indexes such as MEDLINE and Embase. Many studies have been devoted to the information retrieval (IR) process (Spink, Wolfram, Jansen, & Saracevic, 2001; Sutcliffe, Ennis, & Watkinson, 2000), precision and recall, and ways to make this process more efficient (Bin & Lun, 2001; Muin, Fontelo, Liu, & Ackerman, 2005; Wilson, 1999). As English has become the lingua franca of science, the “new Latin” (Eisenberg, 1996), it creates continuity in the domain, but may also cause problems in the retrieval of information. Scholars whose mother tongue is not English may experience difficulties when conducting a literature search. General language skills are needed for efficient information retrieval (Lankamp, 1989), as well as domain- specific terminology. In addition, searchers have to be famil- iar with the language of information and documentation science (Mouillet, 1999) to use the interface of the search system effectively. Most studies focusing on query formu- lation and on the search process in general have been con- ducted with native English test groups. The present study, Received June 30, 2011; revised March 1, 2012; accepted March 2, 2011 © 2012 ASIS&T • Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/asi.22694 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, 63(8):1538–1552, 2012