The Data Quality Score in Family Tree can give you confidence in the sources and information about your ancestors. It can help you find areas of improvement or signal errors and inconsistencies in your family tree.
Our algorithms comb through the data associated with a person in Family Tree and perform hundreds of detailed checks. Some issues you may see highlighted include things like:
- A child being born before his or her mother was born
- The name of a person not matching the name on an attached source
- A person missing sources tagged to their birth
We hope you will find this feature helpful as you seek to improve the accuracy of your family tree.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is the Data Quality Score listed as "Not Available"?
The quality indicator only appears on pages for ancestors that match one of the following birth segments:
- Canada 1800 - 1920
- Continental Europe 1800 - 1920
- Ireland 1800 - 1844
- Ireland 1845 - 1863
- North America 1700 - 1799
- Mexico 1800 - 1866
- Mexico 1867 - 1920
- United Kingdom 1800 - 1920
- United States 1800 - 1920
- South America 1800 - 1920
Are there plans to support additional birth segments?
Initially, we are limiting the supported birth locations and time periods. After refining the algorithm based on user feedback, we will look at supporting additional birth locations and time periods.
How can you call my grandma a medium?!
- The data quality score is not a judgement of your grandmother's character
- The data quality score is not a judgement of your ability as a genealogist
- The data quality score is simply trying to summarize the genealogical quality of her data.
What if my ancestor is an exception to the rule?
It is likely that some issues we call out are not applicable to your ancestor.
Some exceptional scenarios we have seen include:
- The person really did have 15 children
- A name on an attached source was indexed incorrectly
- The clerk recorded an incorrect date in the original source
- They really weren't born in a city, just a rural county
- An ancestor stretched the truth when recording their age
In these kinds of cases, feel free to dismiss the issues by clicking on the issue text, then clicking the dismiss button.
How do I provide feedback?
Feedback about the Data Quality Score can be provided in the FamilySearch Community: https://community.familysearch.org/en/group/323-data-quality-score-feedback
(You will be asked to join the community group prior to providing feedback.)