A word for a single piece of type of information, equivalent to a field on a form

Question

I'm inventorying all types of information used by the people involved in a business process, things such as client name, price, price index, adress,quantities sold, stocks etc.

If I were to do the same thing about a form I would call it inventorying the form fields.

Here, I'm looking for a single word that would mean the same thing on a whole businness process involving dozens of steps and around forty different #### of information.

What could we replace #### by ?

The alternatives, so far:

"type" of information/data seems to wide for the purpose. Numerical/text/financial/psychological are types. I feel that "name, adress, temperature of the day, gross margin..." are too narrow to fill a whole "type".

"field" cannot be used as it for a whole business process involving tens of forms, data that stays in the background, information on spreadsheets, information transmitted through phones, snail mail, email etc. The data used does not necessarily go on a form or a spreadsheet.

"category" seems to fit the 6 or 7 fields that, for example, identify a client (name, surname, middle name, address, id # ...). In my mind, that would constitute a category of information, i.e. identification constitute a category of data.

"piece" of data/info is okay for a single entry, "John Doe" is a piece of info, "address"/"margin"/"date of entry" is not a single piece.

listing, record, catalogue, account, roll, file, tally seem all too narrow/ too wide, too specific to a field of interest.

Answer 1

meant to post this days ago but I was on my lunch break and ran out of time, anyway:

How about "variable".

You could say you're collecting information used by the people involved in a business, involving over 40 variables, such as client name, price, price index, address,quantities sold, stocks etc.

"parameter" might work too. Or "attribute"

To be honest though, field isn't bad either.

Answer 2

The word usually used is simply datum.

It is the singular of the word data and describes any single piece of information.

It is true that nowadays, data is used as a singular word describing information. However, in the scientific world in particular, a datum is still widely used to reference a single entity. It is also used in combination with other nouns, for example a datum point or a datum entry.

Answer 3

Would it be "item" the word you're looking for?

from MW

• item (noun) "a separate piece of news or information" e.g. "He always orders the most expensive item on the menu."

from TFD

• item (noun) "a clause of a document, a bit of information, a detail." e.g. "Here is the insurance form. Please fill in the blank items."

Answer 4

Database theorists might suggest column, from the 2-dimensional table model (rows being the individual records). I think most people use 'field' to describe what you're after, although as you indicate this can cause confusion with the controls (eg text boxes) displayed on a form, which aren't quite the same thing.

"Attribute" might also work: "a property, quality, or feature belonging to or representative of a person or thing".

(second edit: just to mention if you weren't aware that the task you're undertaking would be described as documenting the "schema" or "metadata" and there are recognised standard practices for doing that).

Answer 5

The datacentric term for field would be attribute, which is a semantic concept and neutral as to where (or if) it happens to be instantiated. Attributes have values (corresponding to the contents of a field), and are properties of entities, in turn defined as objects (people, places, and things) of interest to the business. So an attribute of the entity Person might be Date of Birth, and (for a given instance of Person) its value might be June 2, 1998. (And of course it could be used on dozens of forms, spreadsheets, ID cards, etc.)

Answer 6

Data point(s) or Criteria look like they might work here.

"... over 40 different data points."

You wouldn't need to add "{blanks} of information" as after that would be redundant. If you really needed to add that you could maybe say "...bits of information", but that's just extra.

I work in the digital marketing industry and when it comes to projects we'll either say "We're looking for {x} data points, and we'll know we've reached that when we've achieved {y} criteria."

Hope this helps.

Answer 7

"Pieces of information" is certainly an idiomatic choice here.

Here's an ngram.

P.S. We would also say "dozens of steps" rather than "tens of steps".

Answer 8

Try snippet

small piece of information or news

or its synonym

nugget

a small thing such as an idea or a fact that people think of as valuable

Although they could be a bit informal for your requirements.