When a groundwater sample contains very high concentrations of a contaminant, the laboratory may dilute it before analysis to bring the measurement within the instrument's calibrated range. The dilutionFactor on an AnalyticalResult documents this adjustment so the reported resultValue can be understood correctly — a dilutionFactor greater than 1 means the sample was diluted, and the raw instrument reading was multiplied by that factor to produce the final resultValue. A high dilutionFactor also raises the effective detectionLimit and reportingLimit, which can affect exceedance detection sensitivity.
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Analytical Result Dilution Factor
The `dilutionFactor` on an AnalyticalResult records how much the sample was diluted by the laboratory before the instrument analysis was performed.