Observation

Status: Pending

Breadcrumb: Thing > Intangible > Observation

Instances of the class Observation are used to specify observations about an entity at a particular time. The principal properties of an Observation are observationAbout, measuredProperty, statType, [[value] and observationDate and measuredProperty. Some but not all Observations represent a QuantitativeValue. Quantitative observations can be about a StatisticalVariable, which is an abstract specification about which we can make observations that are grounded at a particular location and time. Observations can also encode a subset of simple RDF-like statements (its observationAbout, a StatisticalVariable, defining the measuredPoperty; its observationAbout property indicating the entity the statement is about, and value ) In the context of a quantitative knowledge graph, typical properties could include measuredProperty, observationAbout, observationDate, value, unitCode, unitText, measurementMethod.

Parent types

Intangible, QuantitativeValue

Properties

Properties for Observation

Property	Expected type	Defined on	Description
marginOfError	QuantitativeValue	Observation	A marginOfError for an Observation.
measuredProperty	Property	Observation	The measuredProperty of an Observation, typically via its StatisticalVariable. There are various kinds of applicable Property: a schema.org property, a property from other RDF-compatible systems, e.g. W3C RDF Data Cube, Data Commons, Wikidata, or schema.org extensions such as GS1's.
measurementDenominator	StatisticalVariable	Observation	Identifies the denominator variable when an observation represents a ratio or percentage.
measurementMethod	DefinedTerm, MeasurementMethodEnum, Text, URL	Observation	A subproperty of measurementTechnique that can be used for specifying specific methods, in particular via MeasurementMethodEnum.
measurementQualifier	Enumeration	Observation	Provides additional qualification to an observation. For example, a GDP observation measures the Nominal value.
measurementTechnique	DefinedTerm, MeasurementMethodEnum, Text, URL	Observation	A technique, method or technology used in an Observation, StatisticalVariable or Dataset (or DataDownload, DataCatalog), corresponding to the method used for measuring the corresponding variable(s) (for datasets, described using variableMeasured; for Observation, a StatisticalVariable). Often but not necessarily each variableMeasured will have an explicit representation as (or mapping to) an property such as those defined in Schema.org, or other RDF vocabularies and "knowledge graphs". In that case the subproperty of variableMeasured called measuredProperty is applicable. The measurementTechnique property helps when extra clarification is needed about how a measuredProperty was measured. This is oriented towards scientific and scholarly dataset publication but may have broader applicability; it is not intended as a full representation of measurement, but can often serve as a high level summary for dataset discovery. For example, if variableMeasured is: molecule concentration, measurementTechnique could be: "mass spectrometry" or "nmr spectroscopy" or "colorimetry" or "immunofluorescence". If the variableMeasured is "depression rating", the measurementTechnique could be "Zung Scale" or "HAM-D" or "Beck Depression Inventory". If there are several variableMeasured properties recorded for some given data object, use a PropertyValue for each variableMeasured and attach the corresponding measurementTechnique. The value can also be from an enumeration, organized as a MeasurementMethodEnum.
observationAbout	Place, Thing	Observation	The observationAbout property identifies an entity, often a Place, associated with an Observation.
observationDate	Date, DateTime	Observation	The observationDate of an Observation.
observationPeriod	Text	Observation	The length of time an Observation took place over. The format follows P[0-9]*[Y|M|D|h|m|s]. For example, P1Y is Period 1 Year, P3M is Period 3 Months, P3h is Period 3 hours.
variableMeasured	Property, PropertyValue, StatisticalVariable, Text	Observation	The variableMeasured property can indicate (repeated as necessary) the variables that are measured in some dataset, either described as text or as pairs of identifier and description using PropertyValue, or more explicitly as a StatisticalVariable.

Inherited properties

Property	Expected type	Inherited from	Description
additionalProperty	PropertyValue	QuantitativeValue	A property-value pair representing an additional characteristic of the entity, e.g. a product feature or another characteristic for which there is no matching property in schema.org. Note: Publishers should be aware that applications designed to use specific schema.org properties (e.g. ...) will typically expect such data to be provided using those properties, rather than using the generic property/value mechanism.
additionalType	Text, URL	Thing	An additional type for the item, typically used for adding more specific types from external vocabularies in microdata syntax. This is a relationship between something and a class that the thing is in. Typically the value is a URI-identified RDF class, and in this case corresponds to the use of rdf:type in RDF. Text values can be used sparingly, for cases where useful information can be added without their being an appropriate schema to reference. In the case of text values, the class label should follow the schema.org style guide.
alternateName	Text	Thing	An alias for the item.
description	Text, TextObject	Thing	A description of the item.
disambiguatingDescription	Text	Thing	A sub property of description. A short description of the item used to disambiguate from other, similar items. Information from other properties (in particular, name) may be necessary for the description to be useful for disambiguation.
identifier	PropertyValue, Text, URL	Thing	The identifier property represents any kind of identifier for any kind of Thing, such as ISBNs, GTIN codes, UUIDs etc. Schema.org provides dedicated properties for representing many of these, either as textual strings or as URL (URI) links. See background notes for more details.
image	ImageObject, URL	Thing	An image of the item. This can be a URL or a fully described ImageObject.
mainEntityOfPage	CreativeWork, URL	Thing	Indicates a page (or other CreativeWork) for which this thing is the main entity being described. See background notes for details.
maxValue	Number	QuantitativeValue	The upper value of some characteristic or property.
minValue	Number	QuantitativeValue	The lower value of some characteristic or property.
name	Text	Thing	The name of the item.
owner	Organization, Person	Thing	A person or organization who owns this Thing.
potentialAction	Action	Thing	Indicates a potential Action, which describes an idealized action in which this thing would play an 'object' role.
sameAs	URL	Thing	URL of a reference Web page that unambiguously indicates the item's identity. E.g. the URL of the item's Wikipedia page, Wikidata entry, or official website.
subjectOf	CreativeWork, Event	Thing	A CreativeWork or Event about this Thing.
unitCode	Text, URL	QuantitativeValue	The unit of measurement given using the UN/CEFACT Common Code (3 characters) or a URL. Other codes than the UN/CEFACT Common Code may be used with a prefix followed by a colon.
unitText	Text	QuantitativeValue	A string or text indicating the unit of measurement. Useful if you cannot provide a standard unit code for unitCode.
url	URL	Thing	URL of the item.
value	Boolean, Number, StructuredValue, Text	QuantitativeValue	The value of a QuantitativeValue (including Observation) or property value node. * For QuantitativeValue and MonetaryAmount, the recommended type for values is 'Number'. * For PropertyValue, it can be 'Text', 'Number', 'Boolean', or 'StructuredValue'. * Use values from 0123456789 (Unicode 'DIGIT ZERO' (U+0030) to 'DIGIT NINE' (U+0039)) rather than superficially similar Unicode symbols. * Use '.' (Unicode 'FULL STOP' (U+002E)) rather than ',' to indicate a decimal point. Avoid using these symbols as a readability separator.
valueReference	DefinedTerm, Enumeration, MeasurementTypeEnumeration, PropertyValue, QualitativeValue, QuantitativeValue, StructuredValue, Text	QuantitativeValue	A secondary value that provides additional information on the original value, e.g. a reference temperature or a type of measurement.

Example

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Observation",
  "name": "Example Name",
  "description": "A short description.",
  "url": "/example",
  "marginOfError": "Example value",
  "measuredProperty": "Example value"
}