The Impact of Experience and Time on the Use of Data Quality Information in Decision Making

TLDR

Data Quality Information (DQI) metadata can inform users about data quality, but its generation and maintenance are costly, and users increasingly lack personal experience to judge data appropriateness. The study investigates whether DQI is actually used and influences decisions. The authors examine how decision‑maker experience and available processing time affect DQI use, while also considering task complexity and demographic factors. Results show that DQI use rises from novice to professional levels, suggesting that managers lacking domain expertise should have DQI readily available and integrated into ad hoc data warehouses.

Abstract

Data Quality Information (DQI) is metadata that can be included with data to provide the user with information regarding the quality of that data. As users are increasingly removed from any personal experience with data, knowledge that would be beneficial in judging the appropriateness of the data for the decision to be made has been lost. Data tags could provide this missing information. However, it would be expensive in general to generate and maintain such information. Doing so would be worthwhile only if DQI is used and affects the decision made. This work focuses on how the experience of the decision maker and the available processing time influence the use of DQI in decision making. It also explores other potential issues regarding use of DQI, such as task complexity and demographic characteristics. Our results indicate increasing use of DQI when experience levels progress through the stages from novice to professional. The overall conclusion is that DQI should be made available to managers without domain-specific experience. From this it would follow that DQI should be incorporated into data warehouses used on an ad hoc basis by managers.