Improving the Effectiveness and Efficiency of Boolean Searches for Relevant Tax Authority

This article provides evidence that a unique instructional website develops students' skills in finding relevant tax law more effectively and efficiently. The site provides heuristics for conducting effective and efficient searches and illustrates strategies through specific examples. It also contains 20 self‐tests that provide students with repeated practice in contextually relevant exercises and interactive feedback in the form of scores, solutions, and explanations. Using students in treatment and control groups, we find that using this educational resource increases the Boolean search success of graduate students for relevant judicial decisions and IRS rulings, which we trace to their formulation of more effective and efficient search requests.