THE NOTION OF DATA AND ITS QUALITY DIMENSIONS

The rapid proliferation of computer-based information systems is incre asing the importance of data quality to both system makers and users. However, there is neither an established framework nor common terminol ogy for investigating data quality. There is not even agreement on wha t the term ''data'' means. We lay a foundation for the study of data q uality in this paper. In the first part of the paper we discuss five a pproaches to defining ''data'' in the literature. We then propose an a pproach especially conducive to discussing data quality. In the second part of the paper we discuss the most important dimensions of data qu ality: accuracy, completeness, consistency, and currentness. We define these four and several related dimensions and discuss them in detail. We close the paper by outlining several areas for further research on data quality.