Abstract

In practice, key decisions in all busy organizations are made with a mix of politics, personalities, and data in a complex milieu of competing interests and needs. The goal is to always rely on good data at the heart of important decisions (Kowalski, Lasley, & Mahoney, 2008). However, it is not always clear if collecting good data is sufficient for data to be used. Further, it is not always clear why available data are sometimes not used to guide decisions.