Data Quality Is Getting Worse When We Might Need the Numbers Most

When we turn to the numbers, it’s often because we want to know objectively if something is getting better or worse—the job market, inflation, our health, the national mood and so on.

I’ve spent the better part of two years writing this column that digs deeply into the numbers in the news, where they come from and how they’re used and abused. I’ve come to an unsettling conclusion: The numbers themselves—including our abilities to measure these types of questions with surveys, specifically—are getting worse and we aren’t always using the numbers well.