Believability as an Information Quality Dimension

This paper argues that believability is a more important dimension of information quality than accuracy because of what is called the representation gap between information and data, where “data” is defined as what is entered into an information system and “information” is defined as what is returned by the system in response to decision level queries. It provides an analysis of believability that ties it to the philosophical field of epistemology. It identifies a type of believability, which is called procedural believability and discusses what implications this type of believability has for the design, maintenance, and use of information systems.