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How is "screening quality data" defined under the Triad approach?
 
Answer

Since the Triad approach grounds data quality in decision-making, "screening quality data" are defined as data that provide some information useful to the project (perhaps by helping to refine the conceptual site model (CSM)), but not enough information to be used alone to support decision-making at the desired level of confidence. Thus fixed laboratory analyses can produce screening quality data if too few samples were collected to support a confident CSM so that the representativeness of isolated lab results is in doubt (i.e., there is excessive sampling uncertainty). Fixed laboratory results can also be of screening quality if the detection limit is elevated above the action level as a result of interferences (i.e., excessive analytical uncertainty). Results from screening analytical methods may be dense enough to support a confident CSM, but may be only screening quality if detection limits (or some other aspect of analytical performance) are inadequate to support stringent data uses (i.e., excessive analytical uncertainty).