Evaluation Of Information Gathered Electronically

There is a wide array of data available on the internet from a variety of sites. Not
all the information found on the internet is accurate or reliable.
Reliability is the extent to which the information can be depended on to be
accurate.
Reliability has four main attributes: Authenticity
Lack of bias
Currency
Relevance
Authenticity is where the information is real or true. This means that you can rely
on the information to be accurate and safe to use.
Lack of bias means that the information is presented in its entirety and not filtered
to focus on one or more outcome. It must also be free from personal opinions.
Currency means that the information is up to date. Older information might be out
of date and no longer applicable to the present day.
Relevance means the data is appropriate to be used for the intended application.
Information that is retrieved from the internet or other sources should have these
attributes for it to be deemed reliable and therefore safe to use.
Information should be checked across multiple independent sources to determine if
the information is factually the same and presented in the same way. Sites where
users can edit the content and information are not reliable sources of information.
Especially if there is not a professional or reputable company fact checking and
overseeing the site.
Validation

Validation is an automatic computer check to ensure that the data entered is

sensible and reasonable. It does not check the accuracy of data.
The program looks at the values entered into it and determines if they make sense
based on rules that are programmed into it. If the user enters a wrong value that
still meets the requirements of the rules the data will be accepted by the program.
For example, if the time is 10:30am but the user enters 10:40am. The computer
will check, and the hour and minutes values are both within acceptable limits so
the computer will accept 10:40am even though it is not the correct time.
If the user enters 26:30am or 10:70am the computer will not accept the data
because the values are outside the expected limits.

Types of validation
There are several validation checks that can be used to check the data that is being
entered.

Validation
How it works Example usage
check
The last one or two digits in
Bar code readers in supermarkets
Check digit a code are used to check the
use check digits
other digits are correct
A National Insurance number is in
Checks the data is in the
Format check the form LL 99 99 99 L where L is
right format
any letter and 9 is any number
Checks the data isn't too A password which needs to be six
Length check
short or too long letters long
Looks up acceptable values There are only seven possible days
Lookup table
in a table of the week
Presence Checks that data has been In most databases a key field cannot
check entered into a field be left blank
Checks that a value falls Number of hours worked must be
Range check
within the specified range less than 50 and more than 0
Looks up words in a
Spell check When word processing
dictionary
Verification

Verification is checking that data which has already been entered into a system
matches the data on the source document.
For example going through a set of values on a sheet and ensuring they match the
values entered into the computer.
Verification is usually carried out by humans.
There are two main types of errors that can be found by verification:
 Typographical errors where the user types in the data wrong and there may
be missing or additional characters.
 Transpositional errors where the user switches two adjacent characters in a
number or string.
There are two main methods of verification:
 Double entry
 Proofreading data

Double entry is where the user enters the data twice and compares the two copies.
This effectively doubles the workload, and as most people are paid by the hour, it
costs more too. If the user enters the same error twice then the two copies will still
match.

For example, double entry is used when inputting a new password to reduce the
chance of the user entering the wrong password. If the user enters the same wrong
thing twice (for example if caps lock is on) the two copies will match and no error
will be detected.

Proofreading data involves someone checking the data entered against the original
document. It may be the same person who entered the data or another person. This
is also time-consuming and costly.