Which of the following is a method for ensuring data quality?

Regular audits and validations are essential methods for ensuring data quality because they involve systematically reviewing and verifying data to confirm its accuracy, completeness, and consistency. This process helps identify errors, inconsistencies, or outdated information that could impact the reliability of data. By performing such assessments, organizations can maintain high data quality standards, which are crucial for making informed decisions based on that data.

Auditing data can involve cross-referencing it with other reliable sources, checking for missing entries, and validating data against established rules or standards. This proactive approach ensures that any issues are identified and rectified quickly, leading to improved trust in the data being used for analysis and reporting.

In contrast, the other choices relate to data management practices that serve different purposes. Data encryption is primarily focused on securing data from unauthorized access rather than ensuring its quality. Data replication involves creating copies of data for backup or performance reasons, which does not inherently address the data's accuracy or quality. Data archiving is about storing data that is no longer actively used but may still hold value, and it does not pertain to evaluating or maintaining the quality of the data itself.