group of adjacent characters. For example, in a company's payroll system, separate fields can exist for an employee's name, employee's Social Security number, and hourly rate.
group of adjacent characters in a computer word- or dataprocessing system. For example, in a company payroll system the information about a single individual can be stored as one record. Each record will be divided into several fields. One field will contain the employee's name, another field the Social Security number, a third field the pay rate, and so on.
- a portion of a record in a database, containing one piece of information. For instance, in an address list, the zip code might be stored in a 10-character field. See also record; database.
- a place where information can be typed on the screen, such as one of the cells in a spreadsheet. See spreadsheet.
- a region of space where an electrical, magnetic, or gravitational effect is present.
Data processing: part of a computer file record consisting of a set of continuous characters that represent a piece of information, such as a name field or an address field. See also fixed field; variable field.
Marketing: geographic area in which a product or service is sold. Consumer research done via personal interviews with consumers is accomplished by sending interviewers into the field.
