Difficult to Know If You Can Rely on Or Use Your Data? Look for Paradata to Understand Better
Image by 👀 Mabel Amber, who will one day from Pixabay
These days, everything from the every day choices we make to major scientific discoveries is increasingly relying on data. But how often do we stop and ask: Can we trust this data? How was it created? Who has changed it and how? Why should—or should not—we rely on it?
Image by Pexels from Pixabay
To really trust and use data well, it is not enough to just know what it is about. We also need to understand where it comes from, who made it, why, and how it has been handled or changed along the way. This extra information about the process behind the data is called paradata. Unfortunately, paradata is often missing or scattered in different types of documentation and data itself—which makes it hard to assess the reliability of data.
Read a short article on why paradata matters in Information Matters.