Relevansi

Relevansi, or relevance, is a quality describing how closely something is related to a specific purpose, query, or context. In Indonesian usage, the term spans information science, communication, research, and decision making, where judgments of usefulness guide selection, interpretation, or action.

In information retrieval and search, relevance is the core criterion used to assess and order results. A document is considered relevant if it helps answer a user’s question or fulfills a goal. Relevance is not absolute; it depends on user intent, context, and time.

Relevance can be evaluated explicitly by users through judgments, or implicitly via interaction data. Common measures include precision, recall, and ranking quality. Relevance feedback and learning-to-rank techniques are designed to refine results as user preferences become clearer.

In linguistics and communication, relevance theory explains how listeners infer meaning by assuming the most relevant interpretation given contextual cues. Discourse relevance affects how arguments are structured, how information is presented, and how credibility is perceived.

Beyond information systems, relevance informs research design, policy analysis, and journalism, where information must pertain to the topic and be timely and reliable. Because relevance is context-dependent, methods to assess it combine objective metrics with user-centric evaluation.