Context: Relevance is concerned with whether the available information sheds light on the issues that are important to users. Assessing relevance is subjective and depends upon the varying needs of users. The Agency's challenge is to weight and balance the conflicting needs of current and potential users to produce statistics that satisfy the most important needs within given resource constraints. In assessing relevance, one approach is to gauge relevance directly, by polling users about the data. Indirect evidence of relevance may be found by ascertaining where there are processes in place to determine the uses of data and the views of their users or to use the data in-house for research and other analysis. Relevance refers to the processes for monitoring the relevance and practical usefulness of existing statistics in meeting users" needs and how these processes impact the development of statistical programmes.
This concept can be broken down into: "Relevance - completeness"; "Relevance - user needs"; "Relevance - user satisfaction".
"Completeness" refers to the the extent to which all statistics that are needed are available. The measurement of the availability of the necessary statistics normally refers to data sets and compares the required data set to the available one.
"User Needs" refers to the description of users and their respective needs with respect to the statistical data. The main users (e.g. official authorities, the public or others) and user needs should be stated, e.g. official authorities with the needs for policy indicators, national users, etc.
"User Satisfaction" refers to the measure to determine user satisfaction. This concerns how well the disseminated statistics meet the expressed user needs. If user satisfaction surveys have been conducted, the domain manager should mention them. Otherwise, any other indication or measure to determine user satisfaction might be used.

Source: SDMX (2009)

Hyperlink: http://www.sdmx.org/

Creation: 2/2/2005 12:00:00 AM

Update: 2/21/2008 12:00:00 AM