Query Performance Prediction Using a Child-Focused Definition of Relevance
Hrishita Chakrabarti and Maria Soledad Pera. 2026. “Query Performance Prediction Using a Child-Focused Definition of Relevance”. In Advances in Information Retrieval – 48th European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR 2026), Lecture Notes in Computer Science Volume 16484, pp. 388–399. Springer. DOI:10.1007/978-3-032-21300-6_29.
Abstract
Query performance prediction (QPP) methods have primarily been tailored to mainstream users, thus relying on the traditional concept of relevance. In the case of children, however, relevance goes beyond content-based resource-query matching, which is why we gauge the performance of existing QPP methods in estimating the fit of resources retrieved in response to child-formulated queries. Outcomes from our empirical exploration of various QPP methods using a traditional and a child-focused definition of relevance on 2 datasets reveal the limitations in the adaptability of existing methods to the context of child information retrieval.