DQ Tags and Decision-Making

There has been some evidence that decision outcomes can be impacted by providing metadata about the quality of the data used in a decision, but there is no agreement on the specific context in which such impact is observed. Furthermore, there has been little emphasis on the semantics and usability of such metadata in research to date, with consequent implications for experimental soundness. In this paper, we describe how these issues are addressed through the novel application, respectively, of the information quality framework InfoQual and the interaction design technique of contextual inquiry to the experimental design. In distinct contrast to previous studies, there was evidence that including data quality metadata can significantly increase decision time and may reduce consensus even though decision choice is not changed.