A Statistical Analysis of UK Academic Web Links

The analysis of web-based documents using quantitative techniques is a well-established area of research within the realm of information science. This paper builds on some of that work and presents the results of statistical analysis carried out on the web link structure text files of 111 UK universities. Summary statistics are produced using Alternative Document Models and the results of the statistical analysis are also graphically displayed, including trendline equations. Mathematical linear relationships were observed between certain bivariate data with subsequent Pearson correlation analysis revealing a number of very strong correlation relationships, particularly between site size and number of source / target directories and pages. This seems to support previous research by suggesting that the directory Alternative Document Model has some advantages over the domain Alternative Document Model.

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