Fitness for Use

Data quality is most commonly defined as “fitness for use”: data is high quality when it meets the expectations and needs of its users for a specific purpose.

This definition, attributed to Strong et al. (1997), shifts quality assessment from intrinsic properties to contextual appropriateness. The same dataset can be high-quality for one use case and low-quality for another.

The practical implication: quality cannot be assessed without understanding intended use. A dataset’s “fitness” requires knowing the questions to be answered, tasks to be performed, and tools to be used.

Related:, 04-atom—intrinsic-vs-contextual-quality