Equivalent to validity as used in quantitative research, it assesses the extent to which the information collected can be seen as dependable, and therefore useable
A measure of the degree to which an item is operable and capable of performing its required function at any (random) time during a specified mission profile, given item availability at the start of the mission (This definition is significantly different from the definition of dependability used by most other US and international organizations dealing with reliability e g , IEC and SAE E g IEC 50 Chapter 191: "The collective term used to describe the availability performance and its influencing factors: reliability performance, maintainability performance and maintenance support performance " As such, its use is restricted to general descriptions in non-quantitative terms) Dependability is related to reliability; the intention was that dependability would be a more general concept then reliability
The degree to which a product is operable and capable of performing its required function at any randomly chosen time during its specified operating time, provided that the product is available at the start of that period (Nonoperation related influences are not included ) Dependability can be expressed by the ratio: time available divided by (time available + time required)