Information Quality and Educational Decision Making

Research investigated: 1) the quality of literature disseminated through an educational information channel, 2) its acceptance level, and 3) its effects upon..decision-making. Some 102 research documents were selected from the 1971 entries in Research in Education (RIE), the abstracting and microfiche dissemination service for unpublished literature compiled by the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC). Researchers assessed the documents' quality and educational decision-makers evaluated their practical utility. Results showed that the researchers rated the overall quality of the RIE documents as low, but that their accpetance by decision-makers was high. Decision-makers with less research sophistication tended to overrate the quality of the documents; the quality of the materials did not differ among the ERIC Clearinghouses, but was found to vary directly with the qualit