Ensuring Positive Impact of Data Quality Metadata: Implications for Decision Support Completed Research Paper

Abstract (Required) Organizations continue to manage poor quality data despite being aware of its negative impact on decision making. One effective way of addressing this situation is to inform decision-makers of the quality of the data they are using by providing data quality (DQ) metadata. However, despite its availability, not all decision-makers use DQ metadata. Further, when DQ metadata is included, the resulting dataset may be different from and significantly larger than the dataset created without DQ metadata. This potentially creates an information overload and the decision maker is conflicted about the use of DQ metadata. This paper demonstrates that decision-makers will use DQ metadata when a guideline about how DQ metadata should be used is provided. The paper also illustrates that variations in task complexity, work experience, and domain-specific experience interact. When guidance on how to use DQ metadata is provided the impact of DQ metadata on consensus among decision-makers depends on such interactions