New approach to the problem of information system effectiveness evaluation

摘要

The object of this paper is to present a new kind of approach to the problem of information system effectiveness evaluation as based on the theory of fuzzy sets. On the basis of this theory, the concepts of relevance and pertinence, which are the basic concepts used in determining the indices of information system effectiveness evaluation, have been defined. Assuming that in evaluating the effectiveness of information systems, one should consider separately the problem of quality evaluation of the transformation of the contents of documents and information requests into their search patterns and the problem of quality evaluation of the process of profile control of a document set of the information system, definitions have been given of parameters of quality evaluation of the transformation of the contents of documents and information requests into their search patterns with regard to a given information request as well as of parameters of quality evaluation of the process with regard to the whole set of information requests under examination. Besides, parameters of quality evaluation of the process of profile control of a document set of the information system have been defined. The parameters of effectiveness evaluation of information systems put forward in this paper take account of the fact that both evaluation of the relevance and evaluation of the pertinence of documents are of a continuous character.