How is data quality defined?
Various definitions exist for data quality because there are many dimensions to data. Various articles and papers provide a list of data quality criteria. These vary slightly from article to article. Sometimes the definitions are the same but the terminology is different. Some articles skip one dimension. The following is a set of these data quality dimensions:
- Accuracy questions whether the value of the data is as it should be. Inaccurate account balances in a banking environment are an example. If the account balance is $100, then it should be $100 and not $99 or $101. Another example is the wrong addresses in the client dataset.
123 Elm Street
cannot be stored as123
Elb Street
. - Completeness indicates whether all the necessary data has been included. In a financial report, data for all the quarters must be included. If data for an entire quarter is missing from a financial report, it will mean wrong reporting and analytics.
- Consistency...