Research Log #004

How can information quality be measured?

Category: Research · Status: Published · June 2026

Question

Research Log #003 suggested that decision quality may depend on the quality of available information.

If this is true, another question emerges:

Can information quality itself be measured?

If so, what characteristics distinguish high-quality information from low-quality information?

Not all information appears equally useful.

Some information is accurate but outdated.

Some information is recent but unreliable.

Some information is highly detailed but irrelevant to the decision being made.

In daily life, people often evaluate information using intuitive judgments about trustworthiness, relevance and credibility.

However, these judgments are rarely documented explicitly.

Several candidate dimensions of information quality emerge:

Information may be considered higher quality when more of these dimensions are present.

The absence of one or more dimensions may reduce the usefulness of information for decision-making.

This suggests that information quality may not be a single property but a combination of multiple factors.

EdgeLab currently does not know whether information quality can be measured objectively.

However, the observations suggest that information quality may be evaluated through several observable characteristics.

A working hypothesis emerges:

Information quality may be evaluated through dimensions such as accuracy, relevance, timeliness, completeness and credibility.

This hypothesis remains unvalidated.

If information quality depends on multiple dimensions, another question follows:

Which dimension of information quality matters most for decision quality?

This question will be explored in future research.

Research over assumptions.
Evidence over opinions.