Dimensions and Metrics of Information Quality
"Information quality" is a measure of the value which the information provides to the user of that information. "Quality" is often perceived as subjective and the quality of information can then vary among users and among uses of the information. Nevertheless, a high degree of quality increases its objectivity or at least the intersubjectivity. Accuracy can be seen as just one element of IQ but, depending upon how it is defined, can also be seen as encompassing many other dimensions of quality.
If not, it is perceived that often there is a trade-off between accuracy and other dimensions, aspects or elements of the information determining its suitability for any given tasks. A list of dimensions or elements used in assessing subjective Information Quality is:
- Intrinsic IQ: Accuracy, Objectivity, Believability, Reputation
- Contextual IQ: Relevancy, Value-Added, Timeliness, Completeness, Amount of information
- Representational IQ: Interpretability, Format, Coherence, Compatibility
- Accessibility IQ: Accessibility, Access security
While information as a distinct term has various ambiguous definitions, there's one which is more general, such as "description of events". While the occurrences being described cannot be subjectively evaluated for quality, since they're very much autonomous events in space and time, their description can—since it possesses a garnishment attribute, unavoidably attached by the medium which carried the information, from the initial moment of the occurrences being described.
In an attempt to deal with this natural phenomenon, qualified professionals primarily representing the researchers' guild, have at one point or another identified particular metrics for information quality. They could also be described as 'quality traits' of information, since they're not so easily quantified, but rather subjectively identified on an individual basis.
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Famous quotes containing the words dimensions, information and/or quality:
“Words are finite organs of the infinite mind. They cannot cover the dimensions of what is in truth. They break, chop, and impoverish it.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Computers are good at swift, accurate computation and at storing great masses of information. The brain, on the other hand, is not as efficient a number cruncher and its memory is often highly fallible; a basic inexactness is built into its design. The brain’s strong point is its flexibility. It is unsurpassed at making shrewd guesses and at grasping the total meaning of information presented to it.”
—Jeremy Campbell (b. 1931)
“There is a quality even meaner than outright ugliness or disorder, and this meaner quality is the dishonest mask of pretended order, achieved by ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and to be served.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)