“In one Dutch study,” McRaney explained, “participants were put in a room with posters proclaiming the awesomeness of high-definition, and were told they would be watching a new high-definition program. Afterward, the subjects said they found the sharper, more colorful television to be a superior experience to standard programming.”
No surprise there, right? After all, a high-definition television is expected to produce a high-quality image.
“What they didn’t know,” McRaney continued, “was they were actually watching a standard-definition image. The expectation of seeing a better quality image led them to believe they had. Recent research shows about 18 percent of people who own high-definition televisions are still watching standard-definition programming on the set, but think they are getting a better picture.”
I couldn’t help but wonder if establishing an expectation of delivering high-quality data could lead business users to believe that, for example, the data quality of the data warehouse met or exceeded their expectations. Could business users actually be fooled by altering their expectations about data quality? Wouldn’t their experience of using the data eventually reveal the truth?
Retailers expertly manipulate us with presentation, price, good marketing and great service in order to create an expectation of quality in the things we buy. “The actual experience is less important,” McRaney explained. “As long as it isn’t total crap, your experience will match up with your expectations. The buildup to an experience can completely change how you interpret the information reaching your brain from your otherwise objective senses. In psychology, true objectivity is pretty much considered to be impossible. Memories, emotions, conditioning, and all sorts of other mental flotsam taint every new experience you gain. In addition to all this, your expectations powerfully influence the final vote in your head over what you believe to be reality.”
“Your expectations are the horse,” McRaney concluded, “and your experience is the cart.” You might think it should be the other way around, but when your expectations determine your direction, you shouldn’t be surprised by the journey you experience.
If you find it difficult to imagine a positive expectation causing people to overlook poor quality in their experience with data, how about the opposite? I have seen the first impression of a data warehouse initially affected by poor data quality create a negative expectation causing people to overlook the improved data quality in their subsequent experiences with the data warehouse. Once people expect to experience poor data quality when using it, people stop trusting, and stop using, the data warehouse.
Data warehousing is only one example of how expectation can affect the data quality experience. How are your organization’s expectations affecting its experiences with data quality?
This post originally appeared at OCDQ Blog.
We had an illustrative case here at the University last week, where one of the Heads of School asked for a report on how many students were due to commence in first year. Two different reports gave two different answers (materially different numbers), but there was no narrative to explain where the numbers had come from, what calculations had been applied, what filters were used to constrain the query, etc.
It turned out when we did the forensic analysis that there were NINE different underlying issues that were contributing to the difference in reported numbers! No visibility = no credibility = no trust = no value.
I agree with you that trying to create an a priori (i.e., not dependent on experience) positive expectation about data is improbable, but I would say that you provided another excellent example of how a negative expectation about data was created.
In your case, I assume that the Head of School who requested data, and then received two conflicting reports, probably now has a negative expectation about student data managed by the University.
So now, you have the even more difficult task of altering an a posteriori (i.e., dependent on experience) negative expectation about data -- in other words, how are you going to convince that Head of School that they should expect a positive experience with data next time?
Best Regards,
Jim